Frederick the Great, discussion post 6

[cahn]

...I think we need another one (seriously, you guys, this is THE BEST) and I'd better make it now before I disappear into the wilds of music performance.

(also, as of this week there are two Frederician fics in the yuletide archive and eeeeeeeeeee)
(huh, only one of them is actually tagged with Frederick the Great even though two with Maria Theresia and Wilhelmine, eeeeeee this is awesome I CAN'T WAIT)

Frederick the Great masterpost

Comments

Look at these tags!

[cahn]

Alternate History (2)
Alternate Universe (1)
Character Study (1)
Hurt/Comfort (1)
Developing Relationship (1)
Rivalry (1)
POV Female Character (1)
Survivor Guilt (1)
Brother-Sister Relationships (1)
Enemies (1)

Oh MAN. :DDDDDDDD

Re: Look at these tags!

[mildred_of_midgard]

Wow omgggg. I had meant to check, but it slipped my mind. And I was just thinking today that we needed another post! You are so on top of things.

It makes me sad that none of these fics will be authored by me, but okay. That's why I didn't sign up. There are more fics and I helped and that makes me happy!!

Re: Look at these tags!

[mildred_of_midgard]

Wait, how do you view the tags for a fic? All I see is "Mystery Work", and I can't figure out where to click to see characters and tags. I see the overall word-cloudy tag thing, but not how tags are associated with individual works.

OH WAIT. It's the filter thing on the side. If you expand it, you get to see the tags. Oh, that's well hidden.

OMG KATTE/FRITZ IN BOTH FICS BE STILL MY HEART. Each of them as characters only in one? But not the same one, which is encouraging. Also Grumbkow. Wow. These are clearly both for your requests, which is awesome.

If I had to guess...a 1729/1730 AU fic, and a secret summit fic, possibly by the same author which we don't know who that is. :P

Omg, I just worked out how to filter the tags to figure out which fic is which, just like the kid I was who would shake the presents to try to figure out what was in them. :PPP

ETA: SPOILER ALERT HAHA, rot13 to decipher. Detective Mildred is a bad person on the case. :PPP

1) BZT, V jnf fgnegvat gb thrff sebz gur fheivibe thvyg gnt cyhf gur nofrapr bs Sevgm va bar svp, naq rfcrpvnyyl uvz naq Xnggr abg orvat va gur fnzr svp, gung bar vf gur "Sevgm qvrf; Jvyuryzvar naq Xnggr rfpncr naq frrx whfgvpr/iratrnapr" svp. Naq V jnf qrqhpvat gung gung jnf gur bar jurer FQ, Tehzoxbj, rgp., jbhyq fubj hc. Gura V svygrerq fbzr zber naq gur "whfgvpr" gnt cbccrq hc, nybat jvgu "tevrs/zbheavat" naq, hu uhu. Purpx guvf bhg: nygreangr havirefr, uheg/pbzsbeg, CBI srznyr punenpgre, nygreangr uvfgbel, fheivibe thvyg, oebgure-fvfgre eryngvbafuvcf, whfgvpr, tevrs/zbheavat, oebgure srryf. Eryngvbafuvcf ner Sevgm/Xnggr naq Sevgm & Jvyuryzvar. Punenpgref ner ZG, Xnggr, Tehzoxbj, FQ, SJ1, Jvyuryzvar, naq Senam Fgrcuna. Lrc, lrc. V pna'g jnvg gb ernq guvf (naq pel). LBH TB, JVYURYZVAR.

2) Fb gung zrnaf gur bgure bar vf...Sevgm, ZG, Jvyuryzvar, Wbfrcu, naq Senam. Bbu, gung zrnaf Senam znl or nyvir sbe gur fhzzvg. Punenpgre fghql, qrirybcvat eryngvbafuvc, evinyel, nygreangr uvfgbel, rarzvrf, Frira Lrnef' Jne (lrc, Senam vf nyvir). Sevgm/Xnggr, Sevgm & Jvyuryzvar, Sevgm & ZG, Sevgm & bgure(f), Senam/ZG. Fb Jvyuryzvar zhfg zrrg hc jvgu/pbeerfcbaq jvgu ZG qhevat gur Frira Lrnef' Jne (cbffvoyl ohg abg pregnvayl ng n fhzzvg vapyhqvat nyy bs gurz), n eryngvbafuvc qrirybcf, Sevgm qbrfa'g yvxr vg (ohg unf na bss-cntr eryngvbafuvc jvgu Xnggr Fve Abg Nccrnevat va guvf Svp? Xnggr yvirf NH be zrzbevrf bs cnfg eryngvbafuvc be nppvqragny gnttvat??), naq jr trg n punenpgre fghql bs ubj Jvyuryzvar qrnyf jvgu orpbzvat OSSf jvgu gur jbzna ng jne jvgu ure orybirq oebgure. (Naq znlor raqf gur jne, znxvat Ibygnver unccl? :P Bbu, naq Urvaevpu vfa'g cerfrag naq gurer'f ab Sevgm/Wbfrcu gnt, orpnhfr Sevgm vf nyernql trggvat ynvq erthyneyl, orpnhfr Xnggr yvirf, naq fb fyvtugyl zber puvyy Sevgm vf bcra gb raqvat gur jne rneyl. *fvyyl*)

Best. Yuletide. Ever. \o/

[selenak]

Not to go all Francis Urquart on you two, but I can't possibly comment on this entry. *studies finger nails*

Feel free to comment here further on my book reviews, though. :)

[cahn]

Hee, you have no idea how much I have been sitting on my hands when you've been making posts on your Yuletide activity. (You haven't been missing much -- a lot of "eeeeeee I WONDER IF I KNOW WHAT THIS MIGHT BE eeeeeeeee" -- but I have been sitting on my hands a lot.) And then I couldn't help myself once seeing those delicious tags!

I promise to shut up now about this so as to retain the smallest shred of plausible deniability!

...but speaking of gifts, one last thing: d'you think we should tell mildred to check her gift tab? That's the one thing that it looks like she hasn't noticed ;) (Maybe it's in her ROT-13, which I am studiously staying clear of until 25 Dec, buuuuuut I think she would have said it unencrypted if she had noticed.)

Our Insane Family: The Prequel Years

[selenak]

I've been meaning to share this, i.e. support for Mildred's "everyone had PtSD at each other since the 30 Years War at least" theory.

Friedrich Wilhelm of Brandenburg, The Great Prince Elector: Hi. I'm not yet a King either in or of Prussia, but you might say it all starts with me. By "all", I mean making Prussia awesome and making my family - well. I spent my childhood mostly at Küstrin - yes, that one - because it's a mighty fortress, and the 30 Years War was going on. My parents figured I'd be safe there. Speaking of my parents, I didn't see them for seven years, but hey, we nobles are raised by other people anyway.

So, by the time I started ruling, there wasn't much left to rule. The population was wiped out, two thirds of it. The countryside was destroyed. And we still had the Swedes occupying the country. Whereupon yours truly hit upon a couple of winning ideas.

1. Marry rich, repeatedly. Procreate
2. Invite the Dutch in. They're good at trading. Also, start with a Dutch princess.
3. Invite French Huguenots in. Louis XIV has just kicked them out, they need a new country, I need skilled people who owe me everything. Win win!
4. Invite the Jews in. See above points.
5. Once we have goods to trade with, get involved in the overseas trade. By which I absolutely mean the slave trade as well. Profit!

This worked out for me and Prussia. Alas, my first wife died. I married again. And then there were... difficulties.

Friedrich III of Brandenburg, later Friedrich I IN Prussia: Hi! I'm the much maligned grandpa of that sickly kid I hardly knew. Which is also how you can describe my relationiship with my father. Sickly, that is. I started out as the third son, with three more children after me. My wetnurse dropped me, and for the rest of my life I had an uneven shoulder. No, you don't see it on the portraits. That's not what I paid young Pesne for, after all. But they did call me Humpback Fritz. So, Dad was a bit embarassed of me, but he had my two older brothers at first. Did Dad consider he had enough of us? He did not. Instead, when my adored mother died, he married again. A total bitch who gave him plenty more sons and some daughters. Not to spoil anything, but we hated each other. Once my two older brother's died, we REALLY hated each other. And then my younger brother died, and I point blank accused her of poisoning hiim and refused to see Dad without a guarantee of personal safety and hostage exchange. Dad didn't take that well, but seriously? That woman had already persuaded him to part tiny Prussia into fours, with her sons getting as much territory as me. No way. In case anyone is wondering, I won that one. My stepbrothers later got palmed off calling themselves "Margraves of Swedt". Yep, those Schwedts. Aaaanyway, once I was the Prince Elector, I started plan Make Prussia a Kingdom. Which was expensive. I know my son and grandson were on my case for all the money I spent, but seriously? They'd still have been Margraves if I hadn't done that. Bribing the Emperor is expensive. Dress to impress wasn't just a motto, it was part of the Kingdom Prussia campaign. Now, my first much beloved wife died, and I had to marry again because I didn't have a son already. I got one from wife No. 2, though. Actually, I got two. Our first boy didn't make it beyond a year, but tiny terror FW? Couldn't keep him down.

Unfortunately, me and the wife got into arguments about how to educate him. What to emphasize and the like. You might say we sent mixed signals. Which is why he had a time out in Hannover with his cousins. I mean, it seemed like a good idea at the time! Kids his age! He'd make future friends! Did he ever. When he wasn't beating up his cousins, he was swalling golden shoe laces. We had to take him back. And then he freaked me out by having his own balance book, noting money expenses. I mean, which kid does that! Kid ask you for MORE money, they don't try to figure out how their household could spend less. May have been the result of making a strict Calvinist his teacher who scared the hell out of him with the predestination doctrine, but look, that kid had to be brought under control.

I was being an encouraging Dad, though. When he was ten, I gave him Wusterhausen. And would you believe it, but he turned that into a self sustaining estate. A plus achievement, son. I might have had trouble communicating this, though, because welll, he was just somewhat embarassing to look at, not wanting to get into the proper baroque representation spirit. So I thought, hey, marriage will do the trick! One can always rely on the ladies to encourage a man to dress well and look his best. Since I had done nicely in that regard with his mother, a Hannover princess, I thought, might as well go for another one of those for my boy. And hey, maybe it would make the Hannover in laws get over the fact he beat up his other cousin as a kid! Win win!

Look, I know his dress sense remained abysmall, but one thing you can't accuse me of: lack of trying. After all, we all want only the best for our kids.

Re: Our Insane Family: The Prequel Years

[mildred_of_midgard]

Good lord. Also, I love his voice in this. You do such good character voices. (Trenck's "protesting too much" was brilliant!)

mostly at Küstrin - yes, that one - because it's a mighty fortress

Yep. Mighty fortresses are useful for when you want to keep anyone from hurting your kid, and also for when you want to keep them from rescuing your kid while you hurt him.

tiny terror FW? Couldn't keep him down

LOLOLOL You have a way with words.

So, Dad was a bit embarassed of me
he was just somewhat embarassing to look at

*grimace*

Mildred's "everyone had PtSD at each other since the 30 Years War at least" theory.

I'm just applying an actualfax historian's theory; I wish I had come up with it. The moment I stopped to think about it in those terms, I was like, well, yeah, at what point in history have people regularly *not* been surrounded by war, poverty, and disease? We only got epidemics under control, in parts of the world, in the last century. Poverty is a bigger producer of PTSD than child abuse. Shakespeare does a pretty good depiction of PTSD in a warrior returning home. And exactly when does having PTSD make good parenting easier? Individual good parents with PTSD, absolutely. Widespread PTSD weighting the scales in favor of good parenting on a species level? Hell no.

That view of history caused me to read this passage from Diana Gabaldon (an interesting but not always accurate writer of time-travel historical fiction--if you haven't read her books, you may know her work from the TV show Outlander) in a completely new light. The viewpoint character was born in 1917, during WWI and the year before the Spanish flu. The man she's talking to was born in the 1700s.

“Brianna was born seven years after penicillin came into common use. She was born in America—not this one”—I nodded toward the window again—“but that one, that will be. There, it isn’t usual for lots of people to die of contagious illness.”

“Do you remember the first person you knew of who had died?”

His face went blank with surprise, then sharpened, thinking. After a moment, he shook his head.

“My brother was the first who was important, but I kent others before him, surely.”

“I can’t remember, either.” My parents, of course; their deaths had been personal—but born in England, I had lived in the shadow of cenotaphs and memorials, and people just beyond the bounds of my own family died regularly; I had a sudden vivid memory, of my father putting on a homburg and dark coat to go to the baker’s wife’s funeral.

Mrs. Briggs, her name had been. But she hadn’t been the first; I knew already about death and funerals. How old had I been then—four, perhaps?

“I think Frank’s was the first death Brianna ever experienced personally [her father when she was about eighteen]. Maybe there were others; I can’t be sure. But the point is—”

“I see the point.”

Re: Our Insane Family: The Prequel Years

[cahn]

IT'S PTSD ALL THE WAY DOWN. Argh.

(Tiny terror FW! hee!)

Since I had done nicely in that regard with his mother, a Hannover princess, I thought, might as well go for another one of those for my boy. And hey, maybe it would make the Hannover in laws get over the fact he beat up his other cousin as a kid! Win win!

ha ha AAAAARGH

I am loving this (although everyone in this story needs to be hit on the head)

Fredersdorf

[selenak]

So, my take on Fredersdorf, and Fritz/Fredersdorf, based on very little data - I mean, I haven't even read a single complete letter, for God's sake, let alone several, only quotes of same. So I might be very mistaken.

What I find fascinating from the get go is that he's from a different background than nearly everyone else in this 18th century soap opera. I mean, we may never learn the name of Marwitz the hot page, but we do know he's part of a noble Prussian family. Ditto for almost everyone else. Minor or major noble can differ, but they have this particular background. They speak the same cultural language, literally so. The non Prussians like Algarotti or Voltaire come from a completely different background, too, but they have the superb education and their respective artistic skills, and their very Italian and Frenchness is a plus.

Meanwhile, Fredersdorf is a commoner. And while him loving music is one of the reasons why he ever was allowed near Fritz to begin with, he evidently doesn't speak French, or not enough of it to correspond fluently in. Given how efficient he proves himself to be in the next two decades at picking up new skills, adminstrative and otherwise, I'm sure he's good at learning, but still, that should be a minus right from the get go. Might not be a problem if he were just a potentional one night stand, a pretty face and no more, but whatever else he is, he's someone whom Fritz remains close two for a long time, goes out of his way to have him around. When Fredersdorf should remind him of the worst time of his life, both because that's when and where they met, and because Fredesdorf's language of choice or nature or necessity is the very one his father tried to force down Fritz' throat during that very year, which he'll resent for the rest of his life. Why isn't Fredesdorf dumped the moment Fritz is free of Küstrin and has other options, or shortly thereafter? Why does he instead make the effort he doesn't make for anyone else, communicating in an idiom he resents otherwise, risking sounding clumsy, unabashedly emotional, without even the pretense of irony about it?

You could say "human security blanket", and I'm sure it's that, too, but again: there are other options. Plus: Fritz is distrustful (for a reason) and will only get more so through the years. Why doesn't he resent, even retrospectively, being managed by being given the company of an attractive music-playing soldier?

Tentative conclusion: Fredersdorf must have been able to convince him - at least until the marriage - that irrespective of the reasons for their original getting together, he cares for Fritz, and that he's worth the risk of caring about him in return. Possibly because he's seen Fritz at his most powerless and desperate and been there for him, but again, that could just as well have worked against him, not for him, once Fritz starts to regain power and then become top of his world. And I'm reminded now of Fritz actually could be kind, if he wanted to, not just as a one time gesture but consistently as seen in the case of Louise and three of her children. I suggest kindness is something you need to experience first before becoming capable of it, and the first 18 years of his life were in pretty short supply of it. Therefore, my current speculation is that this might have been Fredersdorf's secret (in terms of why he endured instead of being dumped early on): that he was consistently kind. (In addition to being musical and hot, and efficient at organizing.) And that he was so without being naive; you don't survive being naive at the Prussian court for twenty years as the male and Prussian version of Madame de Pompadour. Especially if almost everyone's default setting is "a commoner? Sneer!"

All of which doesn't mean they both necessarily got all they wanted from each other. I mean, Fredersdorf's marriage could have had any number of reasons. Maybe he just wanted financial independence that relied on not just Fritz alone, since his wife was a wealthy heiress. Maybe he wanted children. (That he didn't eventually have any doesn't mean he couldn't have wanted them.) Maybe after two decades with Fritz, he was emotionally worn out and wanted someone to take care of him for a change. Or he could have felt sincerely attracted. However much or little of the gossip about Fritz and various pages and soliders is true, it doesn't sound like they were exclusive on Fritz' side, and while women were socialized to accept a double standard in that regard, men weren't so much. We also can't underestimate that not to marry was by far the most unusual option in those days if you weren't a Catholic priest. (Most of Heinrich's more long term boyfriends ended up married, too, or were already so.)

But we're still left with twenty plus years together when the odds were against them. Thus I submit: perfect it was not, but I'd say chances are it was mutual love.

Re: Fredersdorf

[mildred_of_midgard]

I absolutely agree with virtually all of this. That's why I immediately had to reply to "you think he was holding on to him, hmm, socially/politically and possibly sexually, but not emotionally" to clarify, "well, no, all the options in my head involve a great deal of emotional holding on, and that aspect is mutual." That part is inarguable as far as I'm concerned, and that may not have come across in my speculations about what they might *not* have been getting from each other.

Especially the part about consistent kindness. I would say the consistency on several fronts was key: kindness, discretion, loyalty, competence, and so on. "If I give him something to do, it'll get done and done well." "If I entrust him with money or secrets, he won't betray them to someone else." "If I let my guard down around him, he'll be kind. He won't hurt me." Etc.

There are lots of different kinds of emotional security that Fritz must have been getting from Fredersdorf, for them to have the kind of relationship they did--like you said, for Fritz to speak the hated German language *poorly* to him, just to be able to communicate with him, and to Du him to show that it wasn't just another case of speaking German to one's grooms because they don't know any better.

"Human security blanket" is a wonderful term and I think a part of it, but no, I agree, not all.

We also can't underestimate that not to marry was by far the most unusual option in those days if you weren't a Catholic priest.

Exactly. It tells us *nothing* about his relationship with Fritz. There are a lot of reasons to get married to women even if you're not attracted to them, and even if you are, that doesn't tell us anything about how you feel about men. (This is part of how there is frustratingly so little data on Fredersdorf.)

chances are it was mutual love.

Agree, agree, agree. This is why my term for their relationship is queerplatonic: more than friendship, not conventional romance. This was a super important emotional relationship that Fritz must have relied on for a long time. All I was getting at in my post that approached it from a negative angle was that there may have been other needs left over that it couldn't meet, whether that was inherent in the relationship, that it was never going to be romantic (and that's fine, many extremely important relationships are not; our modern-day Western society tends to drive far too hard a divide between romance and "just" friendship), or because the situation was so complicated that they went as far as they could without risking it falling apart. (And I think precisely because it was working so well and was so important, they might not have been inclined to mess with it even if it had the potential to go in a different direction.)

To cahn's point about the employer/employee imbalance, I don't think it necessarily has to be a dealbreaker for romantic security in all such cases, but in this case, I have opinions about how Fritz's issues might have limited his ability to get certain needs met in a relationship of this particular dynamic. But I think this relationship did everything it could within those bounds, and the significance of that should not be underestimated.

I suggest kindness is something you need to experience first before becoming capable of it, and the first 18 years of his life were in pretty short supply of it.

The second part of this is the only part I disagree with. I would suggest that kindness was in huge supply in the first 18 years of his life; it's that the kind people had very limited power at best, or none. All they could do was mitigate the trauma, never prevent it. In addition to the two big sources of love and affection from someone older and protective--mother and older sister--we have a million examples of "FW tells someone to abuse Fritz; they play along with the letter of the rules but violate the spirit, and/or they help him sneak around behind FW's back" from Fritz's childhood. That was true even at Küstrin (Fredersdorf was hardly the only example). I think we'd see a very different Fritz if kindness had been in short supply in his formative years.

I think FW being the exception in Fritz's life in so many ways accounts for how Fritz came out of his childhood. Both the "Dad says French and music are effeminate; but all the *other* men I know speak French and love music, including the well respected soldiers and generals," and the "Dad is awful, but other people are nice to me on like a daily basis, even at risk to themselves."

The first, in my view, accounts for why he was able to hang on to his values, the reading and the music and all of that. And the second for why he's so simultaneously capable of trust and distrust, kindness and heartlessness, aloofness and clinginess: he learned that kind people exist but are largely impotent, and that other people having power over him comes with trauma.

What Fredersdorf must have been able to do was convince him that letting him have some kind of power was safe. And I think Fredersdorf's consistency on several fronts, including but not limited to kindness, was key in that respect. (I think there were other factors as well.)

Elizabeth Taylor

[selenak]

Mildred asked me over in the other post about my Elizabeth Taylor comparison re: the very het Catherine and the very gay Heinrich hitting it off so well.

Okay, focusing on just one aspect on ET's long and colorful life from her early child star days onwards: that she turned out to be the first Hollywood star to talk about AIDS and fight for AIDS patients in the 80s, when it was a taboo subject otherwise, wasn't a coincidence. All her life, she had passionate friendships with gay men, in addition to her stormy marriages and love affairs to straight (or at least supposedly so) ones. Rock Hudson, whose death of AIDS was certainly one trigger for her engagement, was one case, but the most important relationship in this regard was to Montgomery Clift. ("She likes me," said Richard Burton, two time husband and stormy-het- love-of-life, "but she loves you, Monty.") They had met when she was 18 and he wasn't much older, they were arguably the two most beautiful young uns of Hollywood, on the set of their first movie together, and became firm friends. It was the kind of friendship where she literally saved his life. This is a good description of the event, which involves her getting into a bloody, smoking car wreck with him in it, finding him chocking on his own teeth, several of which had been knocked down his throat, pulling the teeth out of his throat one by one with her hands (no time to wait for an ambulance, which in any event would arrive only an hour later) and, when the inevitable paparazzi arrived, putting the fear of god into them, successfully preventing them from taking pictures of his bloody face.

She remained the friend you want to have in your corner; when Montgomery Clift, years later, had been so damaged by drug taking the studios didn't want to hire him anymore, she got him work regardless, on "no Monty, no Liz!" basis (and since she was still at the height of her career, this was an effective tool). Clift, whose nickname for her was "Bessie Mae", adored her, too. (In fact, he once told another of her gay friends, Roddy McDowall, who'd been her fellow child star in the Lassie movies and would go on playing Octavian in Cleopatra, that if he were to switch teams, it would only be for "Bessie Mae", but she didn't want him to.)

And gay and bi men certainly loved Elizabeth Taylor back, not just Clift, McDowall and Hudson. James Dean was famously "troubled" (read: jerkish) to everyone on the set of Giants, except for her; she basically was a force of nature, and as much as her romances sooner or later crashed, friendships brought out the best in her. One of nature's Queens and a Diva in the best sense of the word.

ETA: As one of the obituaries when she died put it, re: Elizabeth Taylor:

Unlike Marilyn, Liz survived. And it was that survival as much as the movies and fights with the studios, the melodramas and men (so many melodramas, so many men!) that helped separate Ms. Taylor from many other old-Hollywood stars. She rocketed into the stratosphere in the 1950s, the era of the bombshell and the Bomb, when most of the top female box-office draws were blond, pneumatic and classifiable by type: good-time gals (Betty Grable), professional virgins (Doris Day), ice queens (Grace Kelly). Marilyn Monroe was the sacrificial sex goddess with the invitational mouth. Born six years before Ms. Taylor, she entered the movies a poor little girl ready to give it her all, and did.

Ms. Taylor, by contrast, was sui generis, a child star turned ingénue and jet-setting supernova, famous for her loves (Eddie & Liz, Liz & Dick) and finally for just being Liz. “I don’t remember ever not being famous,” she said. For her, fame was part of the job, neither a blessing (though the jewels were nice) nor a curse. Perhaps that’s why she never looked defeated, unlike those who wilt under the spotlight. In film after film she appears extraordinarily at ease: to the camera born. She’s as natural in “National Velvet,” the 1944 hit that made her a star at 12, as she is two decades later roaring through “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf,” proving once again that beauty and talent are not mutually exclusive, even in Hollywood.(…)

She was a lovely actress and a better star. She embodied the excesses of Hollywood and she transcended them. In the end, the genius of her career was that she gave the world everything it wanted from a glamorous star, the excitement and drama, the diamonds and gossip, and she did it by refusing to become fame’s martyr.

Re: Elizabeth Taylor

[mildred_of_midgard]

Thank you! This was all new to me. I knew she went through a number of husbands, and that was about it.

Wilhelmine's in-laws

[selenak]

How much childhood trauma did the Margrave have?

You know, this made me finally look up his parents closer than through what I recall from Wilhelmine's memoirs, and you'll never guess, but...

Dad was a stick wielding Ultra Protestant. Hence Bayreuth Friedrich studying eight years in Geneva, btw. Mom, by name of Dorothea, got divorced from Dad for her "crime against marital fidelity" and locked up in the next fortress. Future Margrave was then raised by his grandmother. In 1734, the old Margrave finally allowed his wife to leave her prison but only under the condition that she was to emigrate to Sweden and never ever return, and he made that a condition in his Last Will from 1735, too. After his death, his son, Wilhelmine's husband, heightened his mother's Budget to a generous sum, but he didn't withdraw the banishment from Bayreuth, so she died in Sweden without having seen her son again after the time she first was arrested for adultery.

Weird fact: one of Dorothea's brothers - she was a princess of Schleswig-Holstein - ended up married to the Countess Orzelska!

Wilhelmine's opinion of her father-in-law is probably best summed up by the tale which ended up in his wiki entry: supposedly, when she became pregnant, he first accused her of having made that up in order to get attention. When this was not the case, he said he hoped it would be a daughter since by the marriage contract as signed by him and FW, he was only obliged to bear the financial costs for a son. When Wilhelmine's husband the future Margrave told him not to be a jerk to her, Old Margrave went with a stick at him, and there was a physical father-son brawl.

Also of interest: when Wilhelmine's widower - who had married one of Charlotte's daughters after her death, but that marriage ended up without children - died without a son, Bayreuth went to his uncle Christian. And Uncle Christian was nuts. When Christian had found a hot page in his wife's bedroom, he shot the guy, which is why he ended up spending some time under lock and key in the Plassenburg. (He also divorced his wife.) After Wilhelmine's husband released him, he went to Denmark and served in the army there. Once he inherited Bayreuth from his nephew in the 1760s, he fired all the artists, most of whom ended up going to Fritz.

After all of this, you won't be surprised if I point out the full name of the Bayreuth tribe was "von Brandenburg-Bayreuth", for lo, they were the Franconian branch of the Hohenzollern.

It should be added, though, that jerk or not, the old Margrave evidently did finance a Grand Tour for his son, starting in 1730, the year of doom, which is why future Margrave was able to visit France, improve his French there and learn how to play the flute before being called back with the news he was supposed to marry.

Re: Wilhelmine's in-laws

[mildred_of_midgard]

Hm. Let me get this straight. So Wilhelmine's husband

- is named Friedrich
- plays the flute
- hates hunting
- forced to drink by FW
- Ultra Protestant Dad
- product of a troubled marriage
- physically attacked by Dad

They must have had a lot to talk about. :P

Young Margrave: good for you for the A- marriage to your wife, under these circumstances!
Old Margrave: good for you for the Grand Tour.

Hohenzollerns: Stop marrying. Into your own family, into other families, into any families. Stop reproducing. Stop overseeing the raising of your siblings and your siblings' kids. Just...stop. Stop trying to get castles back.

Lehndorf

[selenak]

Okay, so I’ve managed the first 130 pages. I have to tell you, the introduction is worth reading because that, too, is a document of its times. The Editor (writing in the year 1907) tries to be gentle and prepare his readers for all that rococo shamelessness, saying he’d have cut it but for historical considerations, for lo, it seems that (Fritz-derived) image historians had of the Prussian court only turning sensual and adulterous once FW2 the playboy got on the throne? Is wrong! The Fritzian court was not a bastion of chaste stoic Prussian masculinity after all. On the other hand, we’re told to keep in mind everyone is emo in those days, so Lehndorf bursting into tears when his beloved Heinrich isn’t around for a few days is UTTERLY NORMAL. Oh, and about 800 letters from Heinrich to Lehndorf have never been transcribed. (As of the publication of these journals.) „Doubtlessly,“ the editor tells us, „the King himself bears some of the blame, due to the nature of his married life. We have suppressed some names and cut the worst passages, though.“

Lehndorf had a background which makes it at once apparant why a younger Hohenzollern and he would hit it off: he, like F1, was mishandled as a small child and had a broken foot at age 4 as a result which didn’t properly heal, which meant he was lame for the rest of his life. (This is also why he couldn’t have an army career.) His mother always prefered his „healthy“ older brother. (Dad had died when Lehndorf was still a baby. He and his siblings were first raised by their grandmother as the newly widowed mother couldn’t cope with six kids, but then the grandmother died, too.) He had to go through various painful and ineffective attempts to correct his leg. (BTW, this made me flash forward to Wilhelm II, aka Willy – one of the very few things he has my sympathy for is that he went through hell as a child with all those attempts to correct the arm that had been crippled when he was born, as his mother, Queen Victoria’s daughter of the same name, absolutely couldn’t stand the idea of having a handicaped child. Willy’s dysfunctional relationship with his English relations started right there.)

Before I get to the „Heinrich and me: A Rokoko Queer as Folk AU“ aspect of the diaries, some more general tidbits. Before being hired as EC’s chamberlain, young Lehndorff did go and attend Franz Stephan’s coronation in Frankfurt, because Prussian patriot or not, second Silesian War or not, how many imperial coronations can you see in your life time? Also, he’s just into pomp and circumstance and Rokoko parties in general, so it doesn’t surprise me.

Speaking of FS, in later 1753 there’s a rumor he’s taken sick and will die. This immediately causes speculation as to whom MT will try to replace him with as Emperor – money is on his younger brother since Joseph is still a kid, and they don’t see her allowing the Imperial crown slip out of her grasp again. And everyone sees this as an opportunity for another war. They’re having very mixed feelings when it turns out the Austrian spies were wrong and Franzl is alive and well.

Earlier that year, though, Fritz asked the Austrian Ambassador for a MT portrait, I kid you not, and provides one of his own. How that went down in Vienna, I have no idea.

Secretary: …and our ambassador writes the King of Prussia wants to have your portrait. Will send you his own.
MT: To throw darts at?

The selection of the diaries starts in 1750, and there’s a lot of soap opera right from the get go. a) AW’s inammorata Sophie von Pannwitz gets married (since he’s told once and for all by Fritz he won’t be allowed to divorce his wife, and Sophie drew the consequences and got herself an alternate husband), b) Heinrich gets married to Mina, and c) Lehndorf is also supposed to get married, but refuses (this particular candidate, he’ll later cave). Since Lehndorf’s supposed marriage is only his mother’s idea, not that of the King, his refusal stands.

No less soapy is the Voltaire vs Maupertuis saga, aka the warm up for the big Voltaire/Fritz implosion. Lehndorf concludes that a great mind does not prevent one from being a jerk, and is utterly bewildered by Fritz and Voltaire being all buddies again after a previous argumentative bust up.

Lehndorf: I don't get it. Do you?
Heinrich: *studiously says Nothing*

He’s enjoying a lot of the cultural aspects – concerts, theatre, and when he’s with „my beloved/adored/worshipped Prince“, they at times read books to another – but he doesn’t seem to really like any of the big intellectuals as people. Including Algarotti. Yes, this is the first contemporary who finds Algarotti resistable. The relevant entry:
January 4th: Dinner with Prince Heinrich and his table round. In the evening, I visit the opera. There I see the one I was supposed to marry. I don’t regret for a moment having rejected this marriage. I also hear that Count Algarotti will go to Italy. He is an intellectual („Schöngeist“) who has made his fortune at our court. One enjoys hearing him talk but is afraid of seeing him; thus it is with all who are too enamored with their own wit.

Lehndorf hangs out with all three of the Hohenzollern princes so often that one wonders when on earth he’s doing his job with EC. And then you get entries like, when he’s returning from a trip to Rheinsberg: „The Queen is displeased with me. Ah well, no rose without thorns!“

One read thread through the first three years is him becoming unexpected pals with the Countess Bentick, aka the enterprising lady of Mission: Seduce Heinrich fame. She’s married, left her husband and is currently living with her lover (apparantly that’s cool with Fritz as long as you’re not a Hohenzollern), none of which is stopping her from trying to score with L’Autre Moi-Meme. In vain, but it means she and Lehndorf spend a lot of time together, including doing things like climbing on top of the highest Charlottenburg palace tower to enjoy the view, and he actively seeks out her company after a while because she’s clever and fun. And of Course he can empathize with her Heinrich thirst.

In these early stages, he’s careful with his criticism of the actual royals. When „Sulla“, the opera for which Fritz has written the libretto, is premiered apropos SD’s birthday, Lehndorf comments „it is not the best opera I have heard“, which is about the amount of dissing he does re: Fritz and his brothers in the early 50s. He’s a bit more critical about the sisters, though stuff like, say, complaints about Amalie being moody are forgotten when she gives him a letter from Heinrich. (He describes her in general as smart, charming if she wants to be, scathing when not, with intense beautiful eyes and a bit overweight. You can see where all the „she resembles Fritz“ claims hail from.)

ETA: almost forgot: he's most critical of Wilhelmine and her husband when they come to visit. The Margrave may appear as "large and healthy", but he's not really refined in Lehnsdorff's opion. Wilhelmine, otoh, is too refined:

November 12th: The entire Bayreuth court leaves. They say the Margravine would have prefered to stay for the winter. This princess is adored by some and despised by others. She does have qualities for which she deserves to be loved: she is generous, a patroness of scholars and treats her servants well. But she plays at being a wit, thinks herself superior to the rest of humanity and only truly respects her own family; thus, she's always ready to build altars to the King. /and of ETA.

Meanwhile, he practically draws sparkly hearts around Heinrich’s name every time he mentions him. The quotes Mildred already gave are fairly representative. Of course, at some point it dawns to our good Count that Heinrich might favour him with his company but has those other guys besides. If either have you have watched the original UK Queer as Folk: the relationship between Stuart and Vince is what this reminds me most. Have some excerpts from the diary for a conclusion of this comment, all from 1753:

September 9th: the King shows an extraordinary generosity towards all his officers. What pleases all decent folk especially is that Oberstleutnant Keith receives 5000 Taler. It is the very same Keith who when the King was faring badly while being Crown Prince had to escape, and lived at times in the Netherlands, at others in England, at last in Lissabon. It seemed for quite a while that His Majesty had forgotten him; but now he received, in addition to the money, a most gracious letter and the invitation to join his Majesty at the camp.

September 18th: The Queen goes with all her Braunschweig relations to Schönhausen to dine. I am terribly bored.

September 19th: My prince talks most graciously with me, but it is not the tone I am used to hearing from him. In the end, I regard this as a hint from heaven to liberate me from my passion for him.

September 29th: My poor prince is sick, which worries me more than anything else. Oh, how wise would a man be to be content with his position in life and not chase after having something which at first appears beautiful, charming and delicious but in the end causes only pain!

September 30th: At evening with Prince Heinrich again, who is still sick. Oh my God, how much willpower is necessary to tear out a passion of one’s heart which has taken root there so strongly! It is a hard fate, having to make such sacrifices.

December 3rd: We participate in the great hunt. (…) I note with joy how disgusted the Prince of Prussia - aka AW - is by hunting. He says he cannot find joy in attacking creatures which have no chance to defend themselves. Prince Ferdinand shoots carelessly and hits a farmer.

December 10th: I dine alone with my dear Prince Heinrich, whom I love with all my heart.

December 21st: Diner at Prince Heinrich’s. I am surprised to encounter Stillfried here, with whom I used to correspond. He is an amiable young man. I have a long conversation with Prince Heinrich which saddens me. I always find that one moment of pure joy is followed by ten days of grief!

December 22nd. Prince Heinrich arrives in tight riding pants and beautiful like an angel for dinner.

Re: Lehndorf

[cahn]

eeeeeeee this is so great! Thank you! (And yay Team Frederician Fandom!)
Man, I am loving how every day I basically get a new crackfic for this fandom. Only most of them actually happened.

he’d have cut it but for historical considerations, for lo, it seems that (Fritz-derived) image historians had of the Prussian court only turning sensual and adulterous once FW2 the playboy got on the throne? Is wrong! The Fritzian court was not a bastion of chaste stoic Prussian masculinity after all.

LOL awwww I love Overly Earnest Editor Historian -- seriously, I'm not joking, I understand that it's because of people like this not cutting things that we HAVE it, but at the same time I kind of want to pat him on the head.

everyone is emo in those days, so Lehndorf bursting into tears when his beloved Heinrich isn’t around for a few days is UTTERLY NORMAL.

okay, now I Definitely want to pat Editor on the head

Secretary: …and our ambassador writes the King of Prussia wants to have your portrait. Will send you his own.
MT: To throw darts at?

LOL, probably??

There I see the one I was supposed to marry. I don’t regret for a moment having rejected this marriage. I also hear that Count Algarotti will go to Italy. He is an intellectual („Schöngeist“) who has made his fortune at our court. One enjoys hearing him talk but is afraid of seeing him; thus it is with all who are too enamored with their own wit.

AHAHAHA I love this. Also... I wonder if there was some jealousy working there? What did Heinrich think of Algarotti?

Lehndorf hangs out with all three of the Hohenzollern princes so often that one wonders when on earth he’s doing his job with EC. And then you get entries like, when he’s returning from a trip to Rheinsberg: „The Queen is displeased with me. Ah well, no rose without thorns!“

*facepalm* LEHNDORF. IT'S YOUR JOB, DUDE.

Countess Bentick, aka the enterprising lady of Mission: Seduce Heinrich fame

ooh, I'm glad you mentioned who she was, because while of course I remember Mission: Seduce Heinrich I'd forgotten what her name was because only cameo role

I note with joy how disgusted the Prince of Prussia - aka AW - is by hunting. He says he cannot find joy in attacking creatures which have no chance to defend themselves. Prince Ferdinand shoots carelessly and hits a farmer.

I gotta say this made me laugh out loud. I knooooow it wasn't funny for the farmer, but at centuries of remove I'm just, okay, Hohenzollerns, you can't even go hunting without making someone's life super miserable! (Also, AW <3 )

Also also, after all the self-aware people who still can't help but mess up their lives in all these posts, I'm finding Lehndorf's lack of awareness in all your comments to be totally hilarious.

Tarare: Salieri and Mozart (and of course Shaffer)

[cahn]

(from last post)
Eeee, thank you for the links to Salieri/Beaumarchais' opera! I'm listening to the recording of Tarare cited in the article right now on Spotify. (The Italian version does not appear to have been recorded by anyone.) I am only about half through, but so far I actually quite like the music, even without understanding what's going on! (It helps that the recording is excellent, of course, but that's not the only thing -- I've definitely heard excellent recordings of music I wasn't particularly taken by.) I think Shaffer!Mozart was a little tough on it :P (Though I think it was also specifically acted (by Abraham) and possibly directed in a way that didn't show it in its best light to child!me.) It's not the groundbreaking stuff Mozart was -- in fact, the music reminds me a lot of Gluck -- but well done for what it is. (I was interested that the article talked about Beaumarchais' feelings about the words having primacy over the music, and Salieri going along with that, because Gluck was about music not being more important than words, yes? and I think, as we've discussed, that is a big part of why I like Gluck better than the people earlier than him. And perhaps part of what I like about this as well.)

It's giving me a lot of ~feelings~ with respect to Salieri and Mozart (and Shaffer's conception of same, of course) -- I'd never listened to any Salieri opera before this, and certainly not since I actually got into opera last year (although I enjoyed Gluck opera earlier than that). But now that I have rather more musical context (than when child!me watched Amadeus, lol) while listening to this, I can totally see how Salieri was famous and loved when he was writing this music; he really seems to hit all the beats quite well and it's what people were used to at the time. And I think even now that if this were somehow unearthed as "very late Gluck" instead of Salieri that people would be falling over themselves reviving it. ...But it's not late Gluck, it is looking backwards even if it's doing it quite well, and Mozart was looking forward, and after a while Salieri must have seemed hopelessly old-fashioned.

...Which of course is everything that Shaffer said. And I said Shaffer!Mozart was tough on Salieri, but this is making me remember that Shaffer!Mozart's flash point for anger was feeling that no one was really getting him or his music, and I can see that feeding into his (hilarious) passive-aggressive taunts of Shaffer!Salieri, and why he apologizes for it at the end.

Gah, though, I'm gonna have to learn my French again so I can read this libretto :P (Or order the CD.)

(Also, partially inspired by our discussion of Joseph, I started listening to Die Entfuhrung aus dem Serail (well, OK, the Sung in English version) which I've never actually listened to before, and it is great, lol. Although apparently the one tiny bit that shows up in Amadeus has imprinted itself in some deep circuit in my brain, because when I heard it I sat straight up and was all, "It's THAT bit!" I don't think I have had that experience with any of the other music in the movie, although I've also seen/heard the others quite a lot more.)

Re: Tarare: Salieri and Mozart (and of course Shaffer)

[selenak]

I can barely read notes, so I love your musical expertise here! I'm curious about the opera now. I haven't listened to an entire work by Salieri before, either, but I did listen to some Salieri arias from different pieces, because Cecilia Bartoli did an entire album of them which was very well received, and I heard some of those arias on classic Radio.

Gluck was who Salieri learned his trade from, so it makes much sense you're reminded of him!

Entführung aus dem Serail was the second opera I ever heard, after The Magic Flute, because of course German school kids are introduced to opera via the later - it's a fairy tale, it's in a language they can understand, and it's Mozart! Then Entführung, because again, understandable for Kids. Will you do a post on it?

Lehndorff: The Bitter Years

[selenak]

So, after going through the cycle of "Heinrich has cooled on me, we'll soon sink to the level of mere aquaintances, I just know it, but I totally don't care anymore, I'm a philosopher now!" / Heinrich: *writers letter or issues invite or is just especially nice*/OMG I still love him, be still my heart, why must I suffer so!" a few times, it's a relief when Lehndorff finally meets Charles Hotham Jr., falls for him, big time, and is all "Heinrich Who?" Well, for a year or so. Which is way longer than the affair with Hotham lasts, for verily, they have their first intimate chat in November, and in February Lehndorff is writing not one but three petitions in a row to Fritz to be allowed to go to London with Hotham who now gets all the "my dearest Hotham", "my wonderful Hotham" etc. designations Heinrich used to. Lehndorff is totally ready to leave Prussia forever and start a new life with dearest Hotham, oh yeah, he doesn't need anyone else, not anymore!

...You guys, while Fritz forbidding that trip just because he can and because NO ONE GETS TO GO TO LONDON WITH HIS LOVER (tm), I'm very tentatively eyeing the theory he's possibly being of the opinion that Lehndorff going from "Heinrich, love of my life!" to "Hotham, love my life!" within a few months and wanting to emigrate does not show the best judgment, and the guy should just cool down a bit and wait to find out whether this attraction holds?

Or not. Maybe he's just being mean.

Anyway, the whole affair really makes a difference to how Lehndorff feels about Fritz. He's frustrated before that Fritz doesn't just see how he, L, would be much more suited to his household than to EC's (Lehndorff, buddy, you don't want Fredersdorff's job, do you?), but he's still in awe, "Great King" (tm) and all. And we get such passages as the one re: Fritz' incognito trip to the Netherlands (the one where he aquired Henri de Catt), where Lehndorff says that HE would have loved to travel with the King on such a trip, or to meet him there while he's incognito, for of course he, L, would have felt drawn to him immediately, what with Fritz being such a fascinating person.

But after Hotham? Lehndorff officially joins the "Fritz, you bastard!" party. And writes a long rant about how Fritz promotes foreigners all the time and totally neglects his own people. Since he's currently in a "Heinrich who?" mood as well, and thinks Ferdinand is just not that cool, that leaves AW as the sole brother he still likes for a while. He gets back to writing "my dear Prince Heinrich" and "my prince" about a year after Hotham, but also back to the rigmarole of "he treats me with respect rather than passion, and that's what I much prefer" / Heinrich: *dear L, want to come to Rheinsberg?/ "Love of my life, light of my loins, of course! Dammit, who's the new guy at your side?" The friendship with AW, remains drama free and AW "my dear prince of Prussia" till the bitter end. (Speak about waterworks. Lehndorff even begrudges Amalie the fact she was present and he was not.)

Sad to say, he also goes from ennui to ennui and increasing dislike with EC, resenting every bit of time he has to spend with her. Lots of complaints about her dullness, and she gets compared to her disadvantage to practically every other female of the royal family. And despite his disillusionment with her husband, he still writes things like "she'd be better suited to be a burgher's wife" and how unworthy of the greatest King of Europe (tm) she is. Most dissingly is the comparison to SD on the occasion of SD's death. Lehndorff is a SD fan (now there's a worthy Queen! EC will never reach these heights!), proving one didn't have to be her son to be so, but the gender difference still holds, for female SD fans don't get mentioned. He also has a wonderfully batshit passage on Amalie's last fallout with her mother shortly before SD's death.

Speaking of Amalie: I'll give you some direct quotes there as well. It's significant that Lehndorff while complaining about her moodiness is still fascinated - "this princess has no avarage, she is either a fiend or an angel", and writes down practically every encounter; what he really can't stand is being bored, which she never does. Whereas poor EC...

Interesting trivia: Lehndorff repeatedly mentions meeting a "Frau von Katte" at Wust, who must be either a sister-in-law or the stepmother. But he has zero interest in Katte. He just mentions him by name once, when recounting Peter Keith's backstory. To him, the hero of 1730 is Peter Keith. I already gave you one quote; when Peter Keith dies, he writes about it more extensively (and that's the only time Katte is mentioned in a "oh, and there also was this guy who got executed" manner), expressing his gladness Fritz showed himself more graciously to the dear friend of his youth in his final years.

Also, for the record: Lehndorff gets married in these years. This fact is duly noted, and there's bitching about his mother in law, but about his wife? Zilch. What she's like, how he feels about her? Nothing. Alas for another lady married for her fortune and for convention's sake, I suppose.

Lastly: Lehndorff writes his diary in French, because of course he does, but, as faithfully noted by the editor and signfiied to the discerning reader by sudden 17th century spelling and old fashioned words, all of the direct quotes from AW in the time between his return to Berlin and his death are in German. Lehndorff doesn't say whether AW ever talked German to him before or whether this is a new thing post disgrace, but he suddenly seems to do so consistently.

Also, he first finds out about AW's disgrace from the Danish Ambassador, even before the first letters from AW himself and from Heinrich arrives. So much for Wilhelmine's hope it's not yet talked about in Berlin in the early stages...

Okay, on to the direct quotes:

Amalie versus Mom: It's war!

1757, 16th January: Her Majesty the Queen Mother is very unwell. (...) She alone is the one holding the royal house together and holding up dignity at court. It has to be said that Princess Amalie bears much blame for her distress, she who often curses the coincidence of being born a Princess at night, and makes her environment feel she's a princess regardless by her arrogance and her moods. (...) Truly, the behavior of the Princess Amalie is unqiue. The waves of the ocean are not more unruly than her manners. Good and evil, philosopher, citizen of the world and pious prig, she's all this in turn and more; ten times a week she's content and discontent. This moody creature is of course a pain to her environment. She feels best when everything is upside down.

26th January: After watching a comedy, I go to the antechamber of the queen mother to ask about her health. Her distress causes universal grief. It is said that the main cause of her sickness is the anger which Princess Amalie causes in her. The most wonderful Queen was so upset that she's forbidden the Princess to appear in front of her. All the world is disgusted by the later.

28th January: The quarrel between the Queen Mother and Princess Amalie continues. Her Majesty has now forbidden that her kitchen should continue to supply the princess with meals. Now the Princess must either invite herself to other tables or grill chicken at her fireplace. Thus, she asks me to hire a cook for her. One sees that the great ones are as prone to human weakness as the lowest mortals.

You don't say, Lehndorff, you don't say. I had wanted to quote another vivid Amalie passage but I can't find it again. Lehndorff records the rumor that she's had an illegitimate child which she has cut into pieces and burned in the fireplace and immediately adds that this at least is a lie because actually Amalie is fond of children and keeps adopting "Jews and street urchins and little negroes".

Skipping to the war, we're far from the days of "Heinrich who?" again: May 10th: Schwerin arrives, page to Prince Heinrich, the most adorable of heroes, who with the cold bloodedness of an old man and the energy of a youth has contributed so much to the happy conclusion of the battle. Little Schwerin visits me and tells me many fine traits of his master. He himself has had a horse shot underneath him, while Major Ducroit of his regiment has lost both his legs. Fortunately, my Prince was only hit by a bullet in the arm. I daresay never has the son or brother of a King been in such danger and made such a success of it as this prince. And when the battle was finished, he did not rest, but dedicated himself until 10 pm to services of humanity by distributing food and water to the wounded, and organizing their transport. One of the officers of his entourage who had lost a horse he immediately gifted with an English - I take it this is a horse? - and the entire saddle, each of his batmen with 50 Louisdor and golden watches for his pages. Thus he did not think of his own comfort but only of helping others and of rewarding the deeds of the young officers.

Representative of the many EC dissings in Lehndorff's journal is this one after SD's death: In the evening, I go to the Queen, the only one we now have left, who will never make us forget the departed one, even though she believes to be the best. (...) The Queen is at heart a good woman; but completely unsuited to be the wife of the greatest, the most estimable and the most charming of Kings. (The what of Kings now?) She has no dignity, no gift to entertain at all, despite talking far more than necessary. She is ill tempered, only feels comfortable among her serving women and is often embarassed when interacting with people of distinction; arrogant towards people of lower standing and submissive towards anyone close to the King.

Evacuation time I: How sad the thought of the Royal House having to flee that has nearly brought the House of Austria to its knees! (...) As we arrive in Spandau, rumors has it Berlin has been plundered and all have been massacred. Now one feels not safe in the city of Spandau and the entire royal house has to move into the fortress. Today, Spandau is of course a part of Berlin. The fortress infamously was where Rudolf Hess and fellow Nazi war criminals were kept. The building in which so many noble people have to find shelter has since F1 only been used for prisoners and for the storing of gunpowder. One hadn't expected the Queen, and thus there is no fire, no light. A prisoner with iron on his feet and a lamp on his hand leads her majesty and the princesses into the apartment consisting of five rooms, with the windows broken, no door able to shut, and no chairs. The entire furniture consists of old portraits, the newest of which shows Catherine de' Medici.

Evacuation time II. This marks the first and only occasion EC ever visits Sanssouci:

The entire court stops at the palace in Potsdam. The Queen has never been here before, and I cannot help but marvel at the strange stroke of fate that the Queen of Hungary must send an army to Berlin in order for the Queen of Prussia to be allowed to see her husband's residence.

The big official return of Fritz from 7 Years War party in Berlin (where he was supposed to arrive in procession but arrived discreetly before hand, so no waving at the populace, but he doesn't get around a palace party):

He embraces Prince Heinrich his brother tenderly, and then the Prince Ferdinand. Thereafter, Duke Ferdinand of Braunschweig - i.e. EC's and Louise's surviving brother - who arrived the day before form Magdeburg presents himself to the King, and he embraces him with much graciousness Now he asks Prince Heinrich who the other gentlemen are. When the later points out the envoys to him, he approaches the Dutch enovy and thanks him kindly for the fact that when the Russians came to Berlin, the Dutch offered asylum to the inhabitants. To the Danish ambassador standing next to the Dutch, however, he does not say a single word, but just makes a short remark to Mr. Mitchell, the English ambassador, and then retires to his room. I immediately hasten to the Queen, whose rooms the King enters shortly afterwards.
Her Majesty approaches him, and the only greeting he gives her after seven years of separation is: "Madame has grown more corpulent!" Then, he approaches the princesses and embraces them one after the other. When he notices the young Princess Wilhelmine - i.e. AW's daughter - , he asks gently: "Who is the beautiful princess I see before me?" He embraces the Countess Camas.
At this point, dinner is served, and the King sits down between Princess Heinrich - i.e. Mina - and Princess Amalie. Next to the later sits Prince Heinrich who has to carry the entire conversation. The King remains at the table until 11 1/7. When he rises and the ladies in waiting and I begin to pass him, he suddenly stops at the door, holding Princess Amalie with one hand, Prince Heinrich with the other, and stands like this for nearly fifteen minutes, gazing into their faces. So this evening does end fairly well.

Re: Lehndorff: The Bitter Years

[mildred_of_midgard]

...You guys, while Fritz forbidding that trip just because he can and because NO ONE GETS TO GO TO LONDON WITH HIS LOVER (tm), I'm very tentatively eyeing the theory he's possibly being of the opinion that Lehndorff going from "Heinrich, love of my life!" to "Hotham, love my life!" within a few months and wanting to emigrate does not show the best judgment, and the guy should just cool down a bit and wait to find out whether this attraction holds?

Or not. Maybe he's just being mean.

You know. Between trying to rescue Schmeling from Mara, trying to rescue Sweden from Ulrika, and possibly trying to rescue Heinrich from Marwitz (to whom he himself is almost certainly attracted and resentful of), now that you've told me the chronology (see, chronology is everything! chronology is not just plot but characterization!)...

I think Fritz's instinctive, knee-jerk reaction to everything in life is "I want to feel in control," and then he rationalizes it with "for their own good." See also his political writings on the importance of personal, individual liberty...in an absolute monarchy where there's some kind of social contract whereby everyone in the beginning of society gave the monarch power to make their decisions for their own good. Riiiight, Fritz.

So, "I want a biddable spy in Sweden, and I promise you you don't want your queen staging coups," and "No, you can't leave me and go to England--what if you mess it up?!" all makes perfect sense from Fritz. The rationalization is strong in this one.

Fritz' incognito trip to the Netherlands (the one where he aquired Henri de Catt), where Lehndorff says that HE would have loved to travel with the King on such a trip

Oh, man, so context here: one of the only two (I believe) people Fritz *did* take along was Glosow. The one who ended up betraying him (somehow) and getting imprisoned. The one Lehndorff said Fredersdorf was jealous of. I don't know about Fredersdorf, Lehndorff, but it sure seems like *you* were jealous of this guy.

Poor Lehndorff. To quote selenak, "Meanwhile, Lehndorff is going: 'I'm right here! Would totally go for a more permanent thing! Dammit! What does he see in Krackow/Kaphengst/Tauentzien/50 others so far that he doesn't see in me?" Seems like both the brothers left him feeling totally overlooked.

"I cannot help but marvel at the strange stroke of fate that the Queen of Hungary must send an army to Berlin in order for the Queen of Prussia to be allowed to see her husband's residence."

Remembered this quote, had forgotten who it was by. Makes sense that it was EC's chamberlain of the 3-volume diary.

 (where he was supposed to arrive in procession but arrived discreetly before hand, so no waving at the populace,

Oh, interesting. My unreliable memories of unreliable secondary sources had it that he let the Berliners wait around all day for him to ride by, then once almost everyone had gone home in disgust, snuck in at 9 pm or something. And that the Berliners never forgave him for this. (Though apparently they did like the way Old Fritz would ride down the street and doff his hat politely at everyone he met--Fritz knew how to play to a crowd when he wanted to. It just has to be *his* idea; you can't force it on him.)

Fredersdorf letters

[mildred_of_midgard]

They have arrived! I haven't magically acquired the ability to read German since I ordered it, but it's a nice thick hardcover book, and that alone sparks joy.

Observations so far:

There are 305 letters, most of which are extremely short, some as short as a couple lines, not many as long as a page. My impression is 2/3 of the book is commentary. That would be just as awesome, if I could read German, or even spend more than 5 minutes poring through a physical book looking for the interesting parts. One day.

No letters after the start of the Seven Years' War. April 18, 1756 is the last one. That means nothing on the final year of Fredersdorf's life after he retired. I have not been able to spot any references to the retirement or any purported estrangement or wrongdoing, but I will have to sift through 50 some pages of introduction and conclusion looking, as health permits.

Haven't even looked for the marriage letter(s) yet, since there are so many letters from that period and a ton of commentary.

One thing I did find was this absolutely endearing anecdote from the dog episode at Soor.

Oh! That reminds me. The editor agrees that Annemarie and Champion in "Meine ganze Equipage zum Teufela, Annemarie ist todt gehauen, der Champion muss auch todt sein; Eichel, Müller, der Dechiffreur und Lesser sind noch nicht ausgefunden" are animals, but says, "presumably horses." That hadn't occurred to me, especially since he usually had multiple greyhounds at any given time. (It's not hard when they're small and have their own staff.)

I don't care, nobody knows, I'm sticking with greyhounds for the fic. :P

Anyway. The editor doesn't give a source for this anecdote, but says Biche was returned after "repeated requests" (that part's new to me), and adds that someone quietly let Biche into the room where Fritz was writing a letter. She jumped up onto the table and put her paws on his neck, at which point, Rococo man that he was, he was so happy that tears came to his eyes. (I'm not certain if the editor felt the need to explain this in the intro.)

...Now I kind of want to rewrite the ending of my fic to include this. <3 (I have it being a surprise and him crying, but not her jumping up on the desk when he's not looking and putting her paws on his neck, omg.)

Will report more if I manage to extract more.

Re: Fredersdorf letters

[selenak]

I have not been able to spot any references to the retirement or any purported estrangement or wrongdoing,

Been meaning to say - if Lehndorff assumes Fredersdorf retired out of his own volition and isn't informed of any dishonorable dismissal for financial irregularities, it can't have been common gossip. Because he's usually good in reporting this kind of thing, and something of a snob about commoners advancing thus far, he's bound to have mentioned it if he'd heard it.

(By contrast, the rumors of AW's disgrace as mentioned were apparantly going around like wildfire before even his and Heinrich's letters reached Berlin. Granted, AW was the Crown Prince, but Fredersdorf was the most important non-military man in Fritz' administration for twenty years.)

Anyway, I'm thrilled you have the letters! And awww on the Biche story. Whom exactly did Fritz ask to return the dogs? FS' younger brother (who I think was the Austrian commander at Soor)? Others?

If he was temporary dog-less when getting those mysterious anonymous letters framing Trenck as an Austrian spy, it also explains something about his mood and lack of willingness to give Trenck the benefit of the doubt. Especially if Trenck simultanously got the horses.

Letters in general: I wonder whether the editor mentions those two packages Fredersdorf's widow sent back to Fritz upon his request, and where these come in? I.e. which time period has significant gaps, other than the one post retirement?

Lehndorf: A month in the life

[selenak]

Okay, before I continue my Fredersdorf readings, since you both enjoy Lehndorff in his sparkly heart mood so much, here he is near the end of 1752, starting when his dear prince is slandered by being accused of having a het affair! With the Countess Bentinck of Mission: Seduce Heinrich! fame. This is before Lehndorff starts to hang out with her himself. Btw, as opposed to brother Fritz, whose very few het encounters in his youth are at least considered possible by biographers - the GAY GAY GAY Burgdorf excepted - I haven't seen anyone believing yet that Heinrich ever slept with a woman, including poor Mina, not even in his 20s. Also making a cameo appearance in these entries: the future Mrs. Fredersdorf!

P.H. travels to Potsdam. On the day of his return, I have lunch with him; very pleasant company. In the afternoon, I am present at a gathering where there is much gossip of an affair between P.H. and the Countess Bentinck who is despised by everyone here. The whole matter gets even more unpleasant as it is claimed she renders disgusting services to the prince. I admit that this whole conversation upsets me terribly, as I know only too well how wrong all these claims are, and I know the excellent heart of Prince H. who is incapable of being influenced to evil by others, especially not by a scandalous woman like her!

November 8th. The Queen's birthday. On this occasion, I am wearing a new suit. The Queen wants to celebrate the Princess Amalie's birthday tomorrow, but since the Princess is sick, that won't happen. In the evening home, I return with an unspeakable joy about being able to leave this party. My only consolation there was to find my dear H. present, who is so well-minded towards me.

November 9th. A very agreeable morning with Vignes visiting me to read the "Maid" - (i.e. Voltaire's play "La Pucelle d'Orleans" - to me. I hold my servant's baby when it is baptized and spend the evening with P.H.

November 10th. I dine alone with Prince Heinrich. Before dinner, we walk for more than three hours through the Tiergarten. (Legendary Berlin Zoo + Park, still existent, then a pretty new institution. Goethe and Carl August will visit it, too.)

November 13th. The three Princes and I have a picknick in the Tiergarten, at the same place where the Prince of Prussia has had a charming party this summer. We cook for ourselves. This is not an easy business, but it amuses us a lot. The Prince of Prussia who wants to prepare a hamburger" - err, Lehndroff writes "Frikassee", but that's what it is - ends up making beef soup, etc.

November 17th. Dinner with Prince Heinrich who had to take medicine. I'm wonderfully well entertained. How many means has this prince to make those glad who enjoy the happiness of being close to him, and with what satisfaction does one receieve the invitation to visit him! Why does heaven not provide such qualities to a private gentleman! Such a man would make his fortune; for if this prince had been born a shephard, he would be the joy of his village. Oh, how unhappy would I be to ever lose this delicious heart!

November 25th. Completely alone with Prince Heinrich. We read alot. In the evening, the Prince gives a party for the Prince of Prussia. There is a masque with magic charms which the Prince has to fight; afterwards, one leads him to the gallery where there is a charming decoration of Bella Vita.

November 25th. Preaching by Achad. Dinner with P.H. Very pleased society; one plays Commerce which lasts seven hours.

November 28th: The King leaves for Potsdam, Prince Heinrich is with him.

December 1st. Prince Heinrich returns! I dine with him and spend a delicous afternoon in his company.

December 12th. Countess Podewils is with the Queen. She is a decent woman who brought a great fortune to her husband in marriage; after all, she was born a Marwitz. In the evening I visit Maupertuis. At 8 1/2 to Redoute. She is very sad. Here, I meet the Chevalier of Saxony and am seated next to Frau von Hertefeld, a sophisticated woman. The King appears very benevolent to the Princess. If it's just "the princess", Lehndorff means Heinrich's wife Mina, just as "the" prince without further designation means Heinrich.

December 13. I spend the afternoon very amused with Platen. The serene princes are present, too; the Prince of Prussia is charming and in a great mood. Prince Heinrich buys a spendid fabric for his wife.

December 15. Dinner with Frau von Grappendorf, a very charming lady who has a revolting husband; in his appearance, he is a monster, full of prejudices and rather ridiculous. I make the aquaintance of the Abbé de Prades, who had to leave France due to his preachings. I also see the fiancee of Fredersdorf; she has received 5000 Taler as a wedding present from the King.

December 16th. I feel very unwell. In the evening, I go to Count Rothenburg, who is married to a Knyphausen, a very witty woman; there is a concert. From there, I go to Maupertuis. At dinner, I am with Prince Heinrich, but I feel so sick that I have to leave. I fear to be confined to my bedroom for a few days, but on the morning of December 17th, I learn that the Prince has toothache. Despite my sickness, I hasten to him. I suffer dreadfully, but when I see how much the Prince is suffering, I forget my own trouble for this dear Prince's sake.

December 18th. My headache continues, and the prince's illness gets worse; he suffers like a martyr.

Decembver 19th. I am a bit better, while the Prince has to get one of his teeth pulled, for his pain is dreadful. I spend the day with him. A Herr von Riedesel arrives from Kassel; he has a pleasant appearance.

December 20th. My dear Prince is still very sick, he suffers, and I suffer terribly, too. I cancel at Count Kameke and at Vernezobre.

December 21st. I stay always with the Prince. There is much noise about a terrible pamphlet Voltaire has written against Maupertuis. These two scholars make themselves ridiculous in front of all tlhe world.

December 22nd. I remain with my dear Prince. All his brothers visit him, and dine with the princess. Bielfeld dines with the Prince; he is a wit who has much talent, the son of a Hamburg merchant. He made the aquaintance of the King while the later was still crown prince, was enobled, and consequently shows something of the funny behavior of the newly elevated.

December 23d. Dinner at the Queen's with her brother, Prince Ferdinand of Braunschweig. (...) Very boring.

Re: Lehndorf: A month in the life

[selenak]

Okay, some more "Heinrich and Me" entries from the Unplugged volume. Note that the Editor in his foreword doesn't even try the "it was just Rokoko emo, people!" excuse. (I don't think even 1926!Editor would be able to pass this off as straight and manly chaste… or would he? How?) Bear in mind these are all entries cut (in the first volume) from the earlier ones I already quoted, and I'm still not quoting all in the relevant time frame which are in the second volume.


1752, December 1. Depressing supper with the Queen. In the afternoon, I stay at home and have the pleasure of spending a moment with H. What a fortune it is to have someone for whom one lives and with whom one always want to live! Time passes so very quickly with him, and only the idea of not being with him spoils this pure joy.

December 10th: While with the Queen, I manage to talk to H. who embraces me tenderly.

December 11th: At the opera, I have the pleasure of embracing my dearest H. It is he who makes the carnival beautiful for me.

(Note: The Carnival season in Berlin started already at the beginning of December.)

December 13th: Lamberg returns. I am glad, for I like him, and I know this causes happiness to the one I love. Which makes me sad, but I don't show it. For jealousy follows passion so swiftly.

December 29th: I visit the opera, and from there my dearest H. I dine alone with him. My heart feels the whole height of this pleasure as I haven't been able to enjoy it for such a long time. He comes with me to my old flat, where we celebrate stag night. (Polterabend, i.e what you usually do before a wedding.) From there, he comes with me to my new flat, where I sleep for the first time.

January 3rd. In the theatre, I see my dear H. A moment with the Queen, and then I dine with the dearest of all being whom I love so tenderly.

January 6th. The same evening, I see my dear H. Oh, one is never completely happy! I am convinced he loves me, and still I am tormented by the thought I could lose this precious heart. I was invited at Herr von Bredow's, so I briefly went there. I find a big crowd, among others a Herr von Katt, who is not the most agreeable company to me.

January 7th: Grand cour at the Queen's. I stay but a moment and then withdraw with my dear H. How much I enjoy being alone with him! What little reason I have leaves me entirely as soon as this dear creature captivates me. Why is man so weak! Without this passion, I could live as a philosopher. I spend a charming evening with him. We read. This pleasure gets interrupted by the arrival of young Lb (Lamberg?). But as I come with my dear H, I manage to be alone with him again.

January 9th. I dine with my delightful H. After dinner, he reads the tragedy Andronicus. Anything about him is interesting, and anything he does, he succeeds in. He has the gift of shattering me by his reading.

January 11th. I thought I would have to dine alone, but as I sit down at my table, my dear beloved little H. comes to visit me. He is in a charming mood. He organizes the cooking, and seems to enjoy himself. Then he reads the tragedy "Cyrus" to my delight; in short, he is charming in everything he does. I see him again at the Queen Mother's. There, I have reason for jealousy, for it seems to me he talks too tenderly with Maltzahn. This makes me sad, and I go home in a depression. I cannot sleep for the entire night, because I can't stop thinking about them. Through all this night, I had bad luck at gambling, too.

January 14th. After church, I go home and wait till it is time to attend the Queen. There, I see my charming H. Without pausing, I return with him to my flat. He dines with me in an amiable mood and is more charming than ever. My sole grief is that he could feel attracted to M. I can't help but thinking he is when I see them together, and it makes me sad.

January 18th: As this is the Prince's birthday, the court of the Queen Mother's is assembled in full. I am convinced that as many have good wishes for the prince as those where clothing on their skin. For to know him is to love him. I seek out my dear H., embrace him tenderly and await with impatience the next opportunity to be alone with him. (...) I feel something for him I haven't felt for anyone else. Sometimes I wish he was poor, so I could give him anything I have; at other times, I would be ready to do the most humble service if only that meant I could be always with him.

January 24th. To the theatre, where they have some pretty dances. At last to H. whom I love so tenderly. But I tremble at the thought he could change his mind about me. If this should happen, all the joy of the world would be as nothing. I always thought to possess this heart would be the highest happiness. But my eternal unrest proves to me that there is nothing perfect in life. The smallest kindness he shows to another robs me of all my calm. Yesterday I saw him drive away with another. I thought he'd go home to be alone with M, and was in despair. Fortunately, I saw M return only fifteen minutes later and found it he only went with him on a visit.

And so on, and so forth. Fast forward to1762, ten years later, for verily, Lehndorff is with Heinrich when Heinrich hears about the Miracle of House of Brandenburg.

On January 31st, I arrive at Hofe, a village with a beautiful House belonging to Count Zinzendorf which Prince Heinrich has chosen as his winter headquarters. Seeing this prince again is a particular pleasure for me as I had to forego this joy for the last two years. I find him full of infinite kindness towards me, and the hours I spend with him are among the most pleasant of my life. He is sick when I arrive. I spend the entire day with him and don't leave his room again until mightnight. He speaks with much interest of old times and of our youth. He sincerely wishes for an ending to this cruel war. After all hopes that the King would emerge successful from all those crisis were in vain, there is a sudden beam of hope through the death of the Empress of Russia. For this princess had been personally incensed against the King and sworn his downfall, avenging all the jokes the King has made about her to our misfortune. Her desire has been so much successful so far that the Russians were in possession of (Eastern) Prussia, Pommerania, Kolberg, parts of the Neumark and with their army in a considerable part of Silesia, and they were about to strike the final blow, when to our fortune death fell on her. Her country loses a good ruler, but we are sure to gain from this. Her successor is said to follow a very different policy. (You can say this again.) (....)

After spending 14 days with this dear Prince, I part from him again with infinite regret. He makes me beautiful presents out of porcellain. After a tender farewell, I take the route Wurzen(....)

Lehndorff: This is the end, my friend - I

[selenak]

As opposed to volume 2 - which had all the Seven Years War stuff in addition to Lehndorff's love agonies and his familiy relationships, which help flesh him out beyond the court, volume 3 is where I can understand why the Editor cut a lot of this for the original one volume edition, only excerpting the drama around future FW2's first marriage. Once the dust from the war settles down, we're in for a lot of court intrigue, this courtier versus that courtier, and it's just not very interesting to posterity (or even from a fanfiction pov), with a few exceptions:

1. the death of Lehndorff's fourth born child and just half a year or later his poor first wife. Whom he does care for; he had gotten finally permission by Fritz to travel abroad - remember, Prussian nobles have to ask the King for this - and because she is so sick, he abandons this longed for goal and instead goes with her to a spa in the vain hope she might recover. When she dies, Heinrich proves their relationship isn't one sided as a friendship and is there for comfort, visiting, taking him to Rheinsberg and then on a trip to the Netherlands.

2. the Swedish visits, both of Gustav en route and of Ulrike later. As I guessed, Lehndorff was Ziebura's source for much of her description of these visits from her Heinrich bio, with the notable exceptions of the shared Fritz 'n Heinrich concern about both Gustav and his mother wanting to otherthrow the Swedish constitution; her quotes there were directly from Fritz' letters to Heinrich and vice versa. Heinrich in general tells Lehndorff about political stuff such as the partitioning of Poland only after it has happened - Lehndorff thought Heinrich going first to Sweden to visit his sister (when the later's husband was still alive) and then from there to visit Russia for a long time was a pleasure cruise until news got out, and even then, there are more stories about Russia per se and Catherine (Heinrich definitely was a fan). While being treated to travelogues isn't bad, it's also part of Lehndorff's general frustration, more on a moment. Anyway, while Lehndorff when in Rheinsberg of course notices whenever the fraternal correspondance intensifies to more than one letter per week, he doesn't get told why, he's just worried it means war because it's clear this must be politics.

(Lehndorff marries a second time and has a living child and another dying shortly after birth within the time frame of the journals, but second Mrs. Lehndorff mostly gets general terms of "pleased with my beautiful wife, and thank God my mother in law isn't as awful as the last one), with understandable fretting whenever she's in labor.)

There are also the various Heinrich boyfriends, Kalkreuther, Mara and Kaphengst, and while Lehndorff devotes considerable page time to just how much they suck and how unworthy they are, this also increases his bitterness. He tries to console himself on general "these guys come and go, but I, who met Heinrich in 1746, am still around as a friend in the 1770s, and he's never dumped me!", but only a year later, that line of thinking has rather reversed: why is Heinrich willing to go to such lengths for these guys, spend lots of money on them, gets them what they want, takes them blatantly taking advantage of him and screwing other people while with him - and is "less generous to his friends"? Why does Lehndorff STILL have the same dead end job he had at 19! (Yes, he was 19 when he started as EC's chamberlain.) And he can't even tell himself the King only promotes foreigners anymore, because other Prussians, nobles and non nobles alike, do get promoted.

All of which eventually leads to him resigning his post and withdrawing to his family seat in the countryside with his family as a private citizen. In the previous year, he's found a new bff in the form of the premiere Polish poet and thinker of the age... who also happens to be a Catholic Prince Bishop. This guy, whose bishop seat is in the neighbourhood, and who is now "my wonderful Ermland", "my dearest Ermland", etc. Never let it be said Lehndorff doesn't know how to pick them: the Prince Bishop is both a great mind, evidently charming, and ultimately unavailable (or is he? Wiki doesn't say how serious he took his vows). This is in 1775, and that's how far the printed diaries go, although Ziebura in her book on the trio of unwanted wives quotes a later entry from when Lehndorff and second Mrs. Lehndorff are visiting Berlin and see the widowed EC taking pleasure strolling through the Tiergarten. As far as I remember from the Heinrich bio, they keep in contact via correspondance and the occasional visit as well, but you can't blame Lehndorff for finally doing what, from his own emotional pov, he should have done eons earlier - quit a dead end job he doesn't like and end the cycle of "I love you, why don't you love me the way I love you?"

(Though: even if he had ever been one of Heinrich's favourites, he'd never been involved in the political goings on. Heinrich may have thrown money at his guys lilke you wouldn't believe, but the most he ever got them, position wise, were commissions in the army, and not on a command level. Certainly nothing involving secret negotiations, about which he kept mum. I think one key to the hateship of his life was that Fritz really could trust him. Heinrich might have wanted to strangle him a lot of the time, but he'd never ever betrayed his brother's confidence.)

General trivia: Lehndorff the Prussian patriot and Francophile, when he's finally making it to Paris, loves it there, but, he'll have you know, he thinks Sanssouci is every bit as beautiful as Versailles, so there.

Poor Peter III's public image in Prussia goes really down. In 1762/63, he's of course wonderful, a savior of the fatherland and worthy admirer of our noble king who reforms like Fritz does, and whose cruel murder is just shocking and horrible. Fast forward to the 1770s, and Lehndorff - who met Peter's mistress when she was visiting Prussia and also met Poniatowski's brother - jots down gossip about Peter's drunken fits of temper and playing with tin soldiers, and when he's narrating a story he's heard about the Catherine/Poniatowski affair from when she was crown princess, it's with admiration for Catherine for getting away with it despite Peter nearly catching and divorcing her. Notably, Catherine escapes the fate of being called MESSALINA, possibly because Heinrich is a fan and won't hear of it, as opposed to poor Elisabeth (first wife of FW2) and even poorer Caroline of Hannover, the Queen of Denmark, whose lover the reformer Struensee is brought down in the ghastly manner I linked in an earlier post in the early 1770s. Lehndorff definitely believes a version of events where Caroline, age 20, is MESSALINA and clearly planned on killing her husband and ruling for her son.

Otoh, when he's in Stettin he actually visits the previous MESSALINA Elisabeth and softens a bit. I'll have the quote for you. I can understand his partisonship here a bit better because future FW2 is Son of beloved dead AW and to Lehndorff just a nice guy whom he can't understand the King being so harsh on. (When you read the entry where Fritz "absolutely wants to make a soldier out of the Crown Prince" and is "incensed at all the French fashion he wears" , you do have an odd sense of deja vu...) More than I can understand Charlotte, who apropos the big family reunion when Ulrike comes to town inevitably meets her former son-in-law for the first time since her daughter got sent to Küstrin, then Stettin for adultery - and embraces him, telling him she loves him dearly and curses the moment she gave life to such a despicable daughter.

(Anna Amalia, also Charlotte's daughter: and this, dear future readers, is why I count myself lucky as Dowager Duchess - after a brief marriage - in Weimar, ruling the state, and raising my kid Carl August on a general "not like a Hohenzollern" principle.)

So, Lehndorff is in Stettin (which he is an increasing amount in the last years of his diary because it's en route to his country house), when lo, he spots Elisabeth the former Messalina strolling by:

With some pity, I see the former Princess of Prussia, who now lives as Princess Elisabeth banished in Stettin. She has the permission to stroll around as she pleases, which she uses amply. (...) The whole distraction the Princess Elisabeth can take is visiting two or three ladies of Stettin society who can hardly be called charming. No gentleman dares to talk to her, other than the fat Duke of Bevern. She dresses in a strange manner, but as she is beautiful, everything suits her well, wherereas the ladies of Stettin who try to imitate her look absurd - two short skirts so one could confuse them with bad ballet dangers, and the heads full of curls so that they look like Medusa from afar. Whereas when I look at the Princess form afar while she strolls down the promenade, she appears like Diana to me. Her pretty little foot is visible, and her legs well above her ankle; she wears a pink corset which suits her beautifully. (...) My wife pays her respect to Princess Elisabeth and returns delighted by her, singing her praises. She claims the Princess is well content, but I can't help but think she must be unhappy.

You know, Lehndorff, I rather doubt that. You go, Elisabeth.

Heinrich is back from the mysterious Russia trip, which might not have been a pleasure cruise after all!

My long awaited dear Prince has returned in the evening. I run at once to him and am full of joy at seeing him again; as he's as normal and kind as if he had never been near the famous Czarina. At first, there are so many people around him that one gets constantly interrupted and loses the thread of one's conversation, but after a while, I remain alone with ihm and Prince Ferdinand. My greatest joy is to find him healthy and well, having put up with the incredibly long journey without a scratch. (...) At nine, I leave my dear prince, delighted to have seen him and talked to him again. He leaves early the next morning for Potsdam.

(...) Was a list of presents Heinrich received from Catherine and other souvenirs he brought from Russia for his friends. He's mum about why he actually was there, though.

When the Margrave of Schwedt - yes, that one, horrid husband of poor Sophie, father of Ferdinand's wife - finally dies not too long after Heinrich is back from partitioning Poland, Lehndorff, who understably couldn't stand the man ("a terrible husband, a terrible father and a terrible ruler") notes the only nice thing you could say about him is that he timed his death right, because the court is already wearing mourning for the King of Sweden (Ulrike's husband), which means they don't have to go to extra morning cloth expenses for the bloody Margrave.

A word on mourning etiquette: not only does the Prussian court wear mourning for people directly related to the royal family - which both the King of Sweden and the Margrave are as brothers-in-law to Fritz - but they also wear mourning when Isabella (of Parma, Joseph's first wife) dies, which did surprise me. (Ditto when FS dies, of course.) But she's the wife if the future Emperor, and it seems even after having just fought the Seven Years War, at least technically Prussia still considers itself part of the Holy Roman Empire?

Re: Lehndorff: This is the end, my friend - II

[selenak]

Gustav, future Verdi tenor, makes his Berlin debut visiting his uncles - again, Lehndorff is not in the know that Fritz has asked Heinrich to team up to talk some sense into nephew, he just think it's splendid the brothers seem to get along currently - , and the rain, it pours. Err, the literal rain, not the metaphorical one.

I see both Kings return, wet to their skin. It is for us a very unusual event to see someone seated at the right of the great Friedrich. Both Kings separate, and the one from Sweden returns to his rooms. A moment later, he bids me enter. I find him leaning at a table and pay my compliments to him, which he returns om am amiable manner and with a charming tone of voice. He is of middle height, has very beautiful eyes, bad skin color, and a natural eloquence. After he has paid me some personalized compliments, he bids me farewell, and I go to his younger brother, the Prince Friedrich Adolf. The later is a delightful apperance, youth itself. I find him with my dear Prince Heinrich, who introduces me with the words: "But I must present you to Lehnsdorff, whom you'll meet again in Rheinsberg", and thus I don't have to say my compliments.

Some months later, Ulrike shows up for her state visit, and we get this exchange upon her first reunion with littlest sister, which totally cracks me up:

"When the Queen embraced her fiercely, she told her: "My dear sister, who fortunate you are to live with our family always!" Whereupon the Princess Amalie did not reply. Thus one can see that what is regarded by one as happiness is of no worth to the other."

So what does Lehndorff think about Ulrike in general, after having been exposed to her for some weeks? Well, first of all, unlike certain Queens who shall remain his boss, she's never boring. But:

I have rarely met a woman with more knowledge and more wit. But alas, these brilliant qualities only bring her misfortune. For she has not learned to make her life agreeable to herself, as she could in her high position. On the contrary, this position contributes to making her unhappy. She knows no higher happiness than despotic rule while living in a country where the very phrase is a crime. In religious matters, she's a free thinker while the higher clergy of Sweden clutches to the letter of the bible. She openly admits to not being able to disguise herself, and since she does not love Sweden, she uses the most terrible phrases for this country. She is a deist, scorns priests and praises despotism, all of which in mockery of her Swedish entourage, who of course hasten to report all of this back home. She is arrogant, though she is kind on a personal level, as long as she doesn't believe one is lacking in the proper respect towards her. And the later is true for the entire diplomatic corps in Berlin in her eyes. (...) A for me, I lunch with her daily and I have to say, she's incredibly amiable on these occasions. But it does annoy people she rarely talks to women. She does treat her ladies rather haughtily. When the poor Countess Sinclair wanted to sit down opposite of her a few days ago, her majesty told her: "My dear, you are my daily bread, sit elsehwere."

In Ulrike's favour (for us, not for Lehndorff): Lehndorff notes she tries to reconcile Heinrich to Mina. Fat chance, alas. I should say something about Lehndorff & the wife of his dearest prince: for obvious reasons, he's never jealous and speaks only positively about her until Heinrich starts to ostracize her for real, and then our courtier basically shrugs and thinks, well, tough, but c'est la vie.

Lehndorff is the source for the big sibling "who was worse?" argument, which it turns out Ziebura rendered almost verbatim, only slightly paraphrased, in her biography, so I shan't repeat it here again (you already know my own paraphrase and have the upload from Ziebura). However, what she doesn't include are two direct sentences, one from Amalie, one from Heinrich, both in German. (Again, Lehndorff's diary itself is written in French, so when he suddenly goes into German, it means people are actually using German.) Given Heinrich pretended not to speak it at all, it is, of course, telling that when things heat up in dear old Wusterhausen, he and Amalie switch to German to really have a go at each other. It's also noteworthy that they use "du", whereas otherwise Fritz & siblings are vous-ing each other in their French correspondance. The sentences are:

Amalie: "Min mutter hät mi einmal so geärgert, det ich fast the schwere Rothe von gekriegt!"
Heinrich: "Ich wollte dass du sie noch hättest weil du so übel von deiner Mutter sprichst!"

(Amalie - in nothern German dialect, btw - "My mother once so upset me that I nearly got smallpox!"
Heinrich : I wish you did if you talk so badly about your mother!")

But that exchange is the only thing Ziebura did not quote. Oh, and Mildred, you wondered whether Fritz heard about the big argument, and whether he had anything to say to Amalie about her stand: Lehndorff doesn't tell, but he does mention being bewildered Fritz gives Amalie another 5000 Taler as a present about a week later. (In general, one gets the impression that after Wilhelmine's death, Amalie got promoted to favourite sister, much to Charlotte's and Ulrike's Frustration.)

Re: Ulrike's visit in Rheinsberg, things are relaxed enough that she shows up in her morning gown instead of in full regal robes all of the time. Lehndorff reports on the festivities (including that Mara and Schmeling to a lot of musical numbers together), but doesn't clue into the budding Mara/Schmeling affair until afterwards. Last but one quote, representative of Lehndorff's takes on Heinrich's boyfriends in general:

Another matter which amazed me was that Prince Heinrich finally decided to fire the infamous Mara, who had such influence on him. He was the son of a local poor musician and was educated as a boy through the benevolence of the late Prince of Prussia who financed his study of music, at which he soon made great progress. After the death of this prince, Prince Heinrich took him into his service. Despite Mara playing pranks all the time, but Prince Heinrich in consideration of his great talents was lenient. Mara possesses a vivacious, passionate temper, and not fourteen days passed without him arguing with the Prince who nonetheless treated him leniently, which spoiled him completely. Four years ago, he already left the Prince once already and went to Paris, and the Prince not only paid for his journey but allowed him to come back upon his return. Last winter, Mara left him once already, and in order to win him back, the Prince had to concede him the greatest privileges. Thus Mara was allowed to get as many meals as he wanted and for as many people as he wanted from the kitchen, he had a courtly equipage, he had a large apartment in the Prince's town residence, in which he was allowed to install Fräulein Schmeling, our first singer, of whom he is enamored. This still wasn't enough for him, and he behaved so badly that the prince finally sent him away.

One can see why Fritz was able to predict Mara was not great husband material....On the bright side, Lehndorff considers the Mara news as a signal he should visit Rheinsberg again, for:

I travel to Rheinsberg. The joy of coming to such a beautiful place and to the amiable lord of it make the long tedious journey bearable. (...) Here, I lead a delicious life. No one on earth can make himself so agreable in day to day living with him as the Prince. Despite us usually being only four at the table - the Prince, myself, Lodwig Wreech and Baron Knyphausen - time flies and we rarely separate before one in the morning. At always spirited conversation, music, painting and reading time flies so pleasantly that one is full of regret to find it did, finally, end.

I hear you, Lehndorff. And thus I conclude, too, my write ups from your diaries. You probably did the right thing at finally calling it quits with the Hohenzollern court, but I must say, I shall miss you!

Random

[mildred_of_midgard]

Since Voltaire write-ups are beyond me today, have this.

There's this one anecdote that I somehow haven't run across in all my reading of the last several months, so it's probably apocryphal, but I used to run into it all the time lo those many years ago, and it's funny enough that I still remember it. So I'm going to share it, and you can treat it like the potato guards: apocryphal until proven otherwise.

So Fritz is doing one of his military reviews where he stops and talks to individual soldiers, so that he knows them and they know him. And being Fritz, he always asks the same questions, in the same order (he used to rotate his reading material and musical scores in a set order as well):

- "How old are you?"
- "How long have you been serving in the army?"
- "Are you satisfied with your pay and working conditions?"

Sometimes he and his men didn't have a language in common, though. So on one occasion, this one soldier had been prepped in advance with the answers to the questions, which he memorized and recited in order. Only on that occasion, Fritz decided to change up the order.

"How long have you been serving in the army?"

"42 years, Sire."

"You don't look old enough for that. How old are you?"

"Three years."

"Are you mad, or am I mad?"

"Both, if it please Your Majesty."

Reportedly, Old Fritz had a good laugh when the situation was explained.

Re: Random

[selenak]

That is a fun anecdote, and headcanon until we're told explicitly otherwise. Along with Fredersdorf smuggling letters at Küstrin and Marwitz the former page surviving the Seven Years War to pounce on yet more Hohenzollern.

Melusine

[mildred_of_midgard]

So remember Hans Hermann's "invented" Aunt Melusine from Zeithain? It's looking like she might not be so invented after all!

I was looking up something else, and in some serious business history book from the 1970s I saw a reference to Hans Hermann's aunt being Melusine, the mistress of George I. This Melusine, in other words. Wikipedia says she was from Magdeburg and her father was counselor to the Elector of Brandenburg, which gives her a Prussian connection and makes it possible she was related to Hans Hermann. Furthermore, one of her daughters by George I married Philip Stanhope, the famous Earl of Chesterfield. (In addition to all the things he's much more famous for, he's the one who was British ambassador in the Hague in 1730, gave Peter Keith asylum, and helped him escape to England.)

And Philip Stanhope, of course, is the name of our fictional protagonist in Zeithain, the one who inherits the Katte letters to the British relations.

Furthermore, I found that the Katte: Ordre und Kriegsartikel volume, which I have limited search ability in the preview of but still haven't bought, says Hans Hermann visited Melusine in England. (It does apparently actually say he wanted to stay in England in late 1728/early 1729, according to a letter Hans Heinrich wrote to his brother Heinrich Christoph, but I haven't Google translated the passage closely enough to see if it says he's planning to *desert*, or if maybe he just wants to ask FW nicely if he can leave the service honorably and move to England.)

Anyway. After all this, of course I had to go look this Melusine up! I mean, Hans Hermann visited her once and *might* have been related to her! You know how it works with me and looking things about Hans Hermann up. :-P

Now, the problem with this Melusine being Katte's aunt is that her parents are named Gustavus Adolphus Baron von der Schulenberg and Petronella Ottilie von Schwencken, which are not at all the names of any of Katte's grandparents, or even great-grandparents as far as I can tell.

But! When I went to look at Gustavus, I noticed he had a second wife named Anna Elisabeth von Stammer. Having more or less memorized the Katte family tree, I immediately recognized that von Stammer name as Hans Heinrich's mother's maiden name.

Now, the trail goes cold here. I can't figure out how Anna Elisabeth von Stammer is related to Eva August von Stammer. They can't be sisters, because their parents have different names. But in an extended family, where she's some kind of cousin, probably once removed, and belongs to an older generation, she could easily be called "Tante Melusine" for simplicity. I see that all the time.

I wish I could finish connecting the dots, but at any rate, it's looking like Melusine is real and connects Hans Hermann to the Stanhopes. Now, selenak, you said of Melusine, "this is a Fontane heroine from a unrelated to Katte novel." Do you want to elaborate on that? It sounds like you were passing what the lecturer said. Is there any connection to the mistress of George I, do you know?

*tracks down one more thing related to Hans Hermann*

Re: Melusine

[selenak]

Yes, I was passing on what the lecturer said, summarizing the lecture for you. Which means he missed out the real life Melusine in favour of the Fontane heroine! Incidentally, the German version of the Wiki entry on her already has "Zeithain" in the footnotes. (Melusine's daughter Petronella gets to deflower Hans Hermann in the novel, after all.) (ETA: Meaning: In "Zeithain", he had sex with a Hannover as well as a Hohenzollern, considering Petronella is George I's kid.)

Katte's Death: The Documentary Hypothesis

[mildred_of_midgard]

I decided to move this to its own thread, because it's kind of dense, and the old thread was getting kind of vertical on my screen.

My money is on the later. Though you mentioned diaries - do they still exist?

Yes, and I tracked them down online, and just glancing at them, it's pretty standard diary-to-memoir conversion in my own experience reading same: 3 lines of diary corresponds to 3 pages of memoirs. So, no, I didn't see any of the stuff about Katte or anything when I looked at the diaries.

Anyway, when famous celebrity X tells someone "only you know this/you're my only confidant" in their memoirs, I tend to be sceptical unless there's contemporary back up material. Everyone likes to feel special.

Ditto, I have always raised an eyebrow at Catt's claims. And while googling, I found one historian saying he was not above changing things for dramatic effect--which, let's be realistic, who is?

Still, as far as I know no other memoirist claims Fritz talked to him about Katte's death and Küstrin - or is there one?

Well! That's a very interesting question that I've had on my list of things to talk about for some days now, but I'll do it now since you ask. :D

---

There's one memoirist I've found who does not explicitly claim Fritz talked to him about Katte's death and Küstrin, but whose account lines up with Catt's almost word-for-word, and whom it's plausible Fritz might have confided in. That memoirist? Voltaire.

Voltaire's account of Katte's death is shorter than Catt's, and uses indirect discourse rather than direct quotes, but functionally, the content is the same. Voltaire's account reads like a summary of Catt's.

Now, it can't be literally that, because Voltaire's memoirs were published in 1784, and Catt's in 1885. But Catt, who became estranged from Fritz in 1782 and died in 1795, might well have been reading *Voltaire's* memoirs and expanding on them, either creatively or from memory. (I don't actually know when Catt sat down and composed them--they cover the years 1758-1760, so any time 1760-1795 is possible. Well, Wikipedia says Catt was blind in his later years, but they don't say when or give a source.)

Also, I'm reasonably convinced Voltaire got *his* account orally, as he uses phonetic spelling for a lot of German names, including being the only author I know who uses "Kat" instead of "Katt" or "Katte." So maybe Voltaire wrote down his summary of what he'd heard floating around, and Catt took it, fixed the spelling, and expanded on it.

Alternatively, Fritz might really have had a standard account that he ran through when he wanted to make sure someone had *his* version of events. It's possible Catt did get his account from Fritz, as did Voltaire, and possibly select others. Fritz definitely does not seem to have talked a great *deal* or casually about Katte, so Catt might have been special, if not unique, in that respect. (He doesn't actually claim to have been unique or even special in hearing about Katte, only about other confidences, but him getting a Katte account from Fritz within a month of starting his new job is striking to me, because Fritz really *doesn't* talk about Katte often that we can see.)

So anyway, the Catt/Voltaire similarities led me to wonder about the third account that comes from someone Fritz might well have confided in about Küstrin: Wilhelmine.

And that led me to the amazing discovery that the accounts of Wilhelmine, Thiébault, and Pöllnitz are line-for-line and sometimes word-for-word the same, and they are much much longer and more detailed than Voltaire's and Catt's. As in, I see no way that Wilhelmine, Thiébault, and Pöllnitz are independent accounts of the same event as they all heard it happen. Back in my days grading student papers, if three of my students handed in these three essays, I'd have had them in front of the dean for academic dishonesty in five minutes flat.

So then I had to look up the dates of publication.

- 1734: Pöllnitz's memoirs published
- 1740-1745: Wilhelmine's memoirs composed
- 1804: Thiébault's memoirs published
- 1810: Wilhelmine's memoirs published

Critically, Pöllnitz's memoirs were published before Wilhelmine started writing her own memoirs. Plus he actually hung out with the Hohenzollerns, so it would not have been hard for her to get her hands on his memoirs. So it's most likely W and T working from P, rather than P, T, and W all working from the same textual source.

So Wilhelmine, estranged from Fritz and lacking access to the Berlin archives, must be relying heavily on the Pöllnitz, to the point of what we'd call plagiarism today. Now, she, who has the longest and most detailed 18th century account I'm aware of, does supplement Pöllnitz with a lot of other material that is nowhere else I can find, some of which sounds like it may well have come from Fritz. But I'm convinced she's following Pöllnitz closely for a good chunk of her account. As is Thiébault, who's writing about things that happened before he came along. And he doesn't have Wilhelmine, so he sticks pretty close to Pöllnitz.

Now Pöllnitz, interestingly, is described by 19th, 20th, and 21st century historians as an incredibly error-ridden source. Fontane disdains to use him or the sources derived from him, and relies instead on the eyewitness accounts of Major Schack (the one who executed Katte) writing to Natzmer (Katte's former CO, who arrested him), and Besser, who was garrison preacher at Küstrin and wrote to Katte's dad.

And so Fontane, working from different sources, comes up with slightly different details. One really obvious one is that "Schack" seems to be the correct spelling of the name; Pöllnitz, Wilhelmine, and Thiébault all use "Schenk." I've long known Fontane's Schack was preferable to Wilhelmine's Schenk, but now that I know Wilhelmine was almost certainly copying Pöllnitz, I've decided I will no longer trust any biographer who uses Schenk.

Fontane (bless him) actually talks about how many errors have been propagated by excessive reliance on Wilhelmine and Pöllnitz, and how Wilhelmine is usually wrong about details but indispensable when it comes to the overall picture of what was going on at the time.

Lehndorff, of course, missed his chance to be an third independent (albeit non-eyewitness) source: he gives us the bit about Fritz's candles and not much else.

So then I started systematically tracking down something that I had only half-heartedly looked into before: Katte's last words. (I'm not kidding, all you need to do is find a hint that Katte had an affair with a Marwitz before he died, and Detective Mildred will be on the case. :P)

1) "If I had a thousand lives, I would sacrifice them for you": Pöllnitz, Wilhelmine, Thiébault.

2) "I die with a thousand joys for you": Fontane in a footnote to Besser's account. It's not 100% clear to me whether Fontane's source is Besser or something else.

3) "Death is sweet for so lovable a prince": The earliest source for this I can find is volume one of JDE Preuss's Friedrich der Grosse: Eine lebensgeschichte, published in 1832, and praised by Fontane for using somewhat more reliable sources than Wilhelmine and Pöllnitz. (Preuss is also the guy who edited Fritz's correspondence for publication.)

Unfortunately, I can't quite tell what his source is. He footnotes the sentence immediately before Katte is led out, which says the place of execution was *not* visible from Fritz's room, and gives as his citation "Munchow an Nicolai S. 530," to wit, a letter from President von Munchow (who was chamber president of Küstrin at the time of Fritz's stay there, and I believe after Fritz was pardoned and released from the fortress, it was in his house that he stayed during the rehabilitation process). Preuss says that Munchow is considered an excellent source, since he was an eyewitness. But I can't actually tell whether the "death is sweet" is taken from that source or not, and I can't find that source.

It's not page 530 of the current volume, because that volume only has 487 pages. You'd think it would be in the 5 volume Urkundenbuch (source documents--I love you, Preuss) that Preuss wrote as a companion to this biography, but that starts with Fritz's accession in 1740.

And if there's a collection of Munchow's correspondence at all, much less one that runs to 530 pages, I can't find it. Perhaps a more fluent German speaker would be able to flip through volume one of the Lebensgeschichte and see what on earth the Munchow reference is to? The page I'm looking at is this one.

4) "I die for you with joy in my heart": Wikipedia. Plus AO3, Tumblr, DW, and other sources clearly derived from Wikipedia. I *cannot* find any source for this quote besides Wikipedia.

---

So that's interesting.

At some point, I might do a proper detail-by-detail breakdown, with letters like P, T, W, V, C, F, just like Wellhausen (he of the Pentateuch documentary hypothesis). :-P But meanwhile, this is a good start.

Re: Katte's Death: The Documentary Hypothesis

[selenak]

To start with the end, Münchow is Christian Ernst von Münchow, and his wiki entry says Fritz did indeed stay with him near the end of the Küstrin days, and also that a grateful Fritz gave him the Erbtruchseßamt of Kurmark. (Sorry, can't exactly translate, it's an income-heavy office without much duties, at any rate.) So Münchow has good credentials.

Nicolai I first thought might be Friedrich Nicolai, central figure of the German Enlightenment, in which case we'd have been in luck, but alas the birthdates are wrong - Nicolai the writer was born 1733, and von Münchow died in 1749. While it's not impossible a teenage Nicolai could have written to him, I rather doubt it. Nicolai's dad, otoh, was a bookstore owner in Berlin; again, not impossible that von Münchow knew him, but they wouldn't have been in the same class to socialize. Outside possibility: Nicolai père was the bookstore owner from whom Crown Prince Friedrich and associates bought their books? (But methinks Der Thronfolger is right in having Fritz' old teacher do that for him.)

Anyway: The Stabi (= Bayrische Staatsbibliothek, which you linked the Preuß from and I linked the Thiébaut from) doesn't have any Münchow correspondance, alas. It probably has lots of Nicolai, but honestly, that's a very long shot.

Back to the beginning: Voltaire's account being based at least somewhat on what he heard from Fritz sounds plausible, though I seem to recall at least one major distortion (and not in a satiric way) in Voltaire's account - doesn't he claim FW was present in Küstrin to sadistically watch the execution? Which he definitely was not, he was in Berlin busy terrorizing the rest of his family, but it's the kind of thing a dramatist probably couldn't resist letting happen. (I mean, at least one fanfic writer went there as well.) Trufax: When Schiller directed his buddy Goethe's play Egmont, he couldn't resist letting the Duke of Alva sadistically (though silently, since this does not happen in the actual play as written) show up in Egmont's dungeon to delect himself at the misery of his prisoner. When Goethe went "WTF?", Schiller replied "Drama! Stagecraft!"

Pöllnitz as Wilhelmine's source: on the one hand, very likely, both because of what was accessible to her in the early 40s and what wasn't, and because despite or because of his proto-Trenck like adventurer personality, several of the Hohenzollern siblings (if not all) seem to have liked him a lot and used him as the go-to oral history source. He went along on the trip to Wusterhausen by invitation for just that reason. (They didn't go there to argue, after all; Pöllnitz was supposed to recount F1 and young FW2 stories, and did, according to a letter from Heinrich to Fritz.) AW when reopening Oranienburg after getting it from Fritz (and remember, that palace had been shut down by FW2 for money reasons) invited Pöllnitz along with Mom to Oranienburg for SD's big birthday party and gave him F1's nightcap and slippers as a present to thank him for the F1 stories he told on that occasion. (This was more of a sign of royal favour than it might come across today.) And despite having quipped "entertaining dinner guest, should be locked up afterwards" when still crown prince, Fritz as King kept him around, paid his debts and heightened the salary he'd received under FW2 by six times that much right at the start of his reign. (Lehndorff wasn't a fan of the old Pöllnitz, mostly because Pöllnitz like many old people before and after him couldn't keep control of his bladder in his old age, and thus stank and made the cushions very went whenever you had to sit near him.) So anyway: Pöllnitz would have been a logical choice for Wilhelmine to consult.

However: there's one problem. German wiki says the 1735 memoirs cover only the time until 1723. Pöllnitz then published a memoirs sequel/prequel in 1737 which covers the time between 1688 bis 1710. In between, he wrote bestsellers about August the Strong's love life (La Saxe Galante) and George I's love life. The memoirs that cover the time from 1723 onwards, Mémoires pour servir a l’histoire de quatre dernier souverains de la maison de Brandenbourg, didn't appear until after his death in 1791, again according to German wiki. So: if German wiki is correct as to what the various Pöllnitz memoirs cover and when they appeared, Wilhelmine can't have used Pöllnitz' written account. Otoh, she might very well have used Pöllnitz himself. Like I said, evidently the Hohenzollern siblings enjoyed his company; he could have visited her in Bayreuth. Maybe he even had already started to write his own account but wouldn't publish it yet since Fritz paid his salary, and he let her read it?

Silesia

[mildred_of_midgard]

Another German-speaking subdetective request.

I have yet another MacDonogh citation where I don't see where the cited source actually says what he says it says. Only this time it's 25 pages of FW's idiosyncratic German, so maybe it's actually me for once.

When you have time, would you mind skimming FW's political testament of 1722 to see if he actually expresses an interest in his successor reviving the old claims to Silesia? Since the Hohenzollerns supposedly only had succession rights to about a fifth of it, he may not mention Schlesien by name. The areas MacDonogh (who is as unreliable as Burgdorf but unfortunately almost all I've got in my current state) mentions are Liegnitz, Brieg, and Wohlau, but he may not mention them by name either.

Thanks!

Re: Silesia

[selenak]

Would if I could, but it seems to be another case of international copyright. However, don't worry and don't ask your friend yet, because I'm pretty sure my local university library must have that one as well. As I'm on my way to my parents in Bamberg, it might be until the new year until I can borrow it physical, should they only have it this way, but the Bayrische Staatsbibliothek and the Berliner Staatsbibliothek have a lot of digitized older books - like Preuss - so hopefully they have FW as well.

Voltaire vs. Maupertuis

[mildred_of_midgard]

Okay, so first of all, every time Voltaire and Émilie had a falling out, she had an affair with Maupertuis. Though this didn't initially cause problems between Voltaire and Maupertuis, it probably didn't help when they arose later on.

But what really doesn't help is that in 1740, immediately after Fritz becomes king, Maupertuis promptly gets invited to Berlin and offered the presidency of the academy. Voltaire does not get an offer to join the court at this time, though he visits.

Voltaire doesn't end up joining Fritz's court until 1750, after Émilie is dead, at which point Maupertuis still has the job he wants and Voltaire's not getting it.

Not long after arriving, Voltaire starts engaging in a money-making scheme that is not terribly legal and involves defrauding the Prussian state. The guy he swindles takes him to court. Voltaire is convinced, fairly or not, that Maupertuis is the one who convinced him to seek legal recourse. So he hates on Maupertuis some more. Like good academics, they squabble over things like whose friends get desired appointments at the Academy.

Fritz is not really pleased at Voltaire's behavior, either the trash-talking of everyone at his court or the way Voltaire's financial dealings hit him in his pocket. He tries to blow it off at first, but he starts confiding to people that while Maupertuis may not be as exciting as Voltaire, he's a hell of a lot easier to live with. So Fritz, who with his control issues *cannot* just leave them to fight their own battles, starts taking Maupertuis' side in their conflicts.

The more he interferes, the more things escalate. The final battle goes thusly. König is a mathematician at the academy who used to be Émilie's tutor (until she passed him).

Maupertuis: I have this awesome science idea! The principle of minimum action.
König: You humbug, you stole that idea from Leibniz. Here, I have a fragment in his hand showing that he came up with it first.
Maupertuis: Forgery!
Academy: *votes*
Academy: Forgery!
König: *is kicked out*
Voltaire: You mess with my friend König, you mess with me.
Voltaire: *writes sarcastic pamphlets attacking Maupertuis*
Future historians: You're both wrong!

Voltaire: *writes anonymous pamphlets about how gay Fritz is and has them circulated in places like London and Amsterdam*

Fritz: At my court, everyone is honest and nobody satirizes anybody that's a royal privilege. Voltaire, if you want to stay, you have to sign the following agreement:

I promise His Majesty that for all the time that he has the grace to lodge me in his palace I shall write against no man; not the government of France, against its ministers; or against other sovereigns, or against famous men of letters towards whom I shall render the respect which is due; I shall in no way abuse the letters of His Majesty; and I shall behave in a manner which is suitable for a man of letters who has the honour of being a chamberlain to His Majesty, and who lives among honest men. [mildred's note: I literally choked reading that last phrase.]

Voltaire: *signs with one hand, writes even better satirical pamphlets with the other*

The crowning glory of his satirical pamphlets is Histoire du Docteur Akakia et du Natif de St Malo, where "Doctor Akakia" is a thinly disguised Maupertuis.

Fritz gets so furious that he burns the pamphlet in front of Voltaire's window, then regrets it because enlightened monarch and all that.
So then Fritz starts writing his own diatribes defending Maupertuis and attacking Voltaire, and publishing them "anonymously." You know, when the monarch writes an essay a Yuletide fic and you all pretend you don't know who wrote it.

Voltaire: *writes another pamphlet*
Fritz: *writes another anonymous pamphlet*
Voltaire: See, he's such a good writer he doesn't need me to instruct him anymore. [Seriously, they crack-ship themselves.]
Voltaire: *writes another pamphlet refuting the one by Fritz that he had praised*

At this point, things have gotten so tense between Fritz and Voltaire and their passive aggressive pamphlet writing and praising that Voltaire isn't having fun any more, and he decides to leave Prussia forever.

But first he denies that he's responsible for that pamphlet circulating in London and Amsterdam (which has now made its way to Paris) talking about how GAY Fritz is. Fritz does not believe him, but decides not to refute the pamphlet, possibly to take the moral high ground, and more likely because no one would believe him, and it would open up the way to some really awkward questions.

But of course, Voltaire can't just claim innocence. He also has to accuse Maupertuis of writing it.

Now, the one thing Fritz and Voltaire had in common was the way they would write things attacking other people and then assign authorship to someone else. We've seen the time when Fritz wrote something offensive in Voltaire's name in hopes the French would persecute him, and he'd have to come to Prussia, and Voltaire found out (and several years later agreed to come to Prussia anyway).

On Voltaire's side, there's one hilarious anecdote in Catt's memoirs where Fritz tells Catt that Voltaire wrote some verse attacking the Marquis d'Argens, then showed it to d'Argens and said Algarotti had written it. Then Voltaire went to Algarotti and said d'Argens was saying the most terrible things about Algarotti and was really upset with Algarotti, and that Voltaire had no idea why, but he thought Algarotti should know.

Then Algarotti pretended to be upset with d'Argens, but as soon as Voltaire was gone, Algarotti went and talked to d'Argens, and d'Argens told him about the verse Voltaire had shown him, and Algarotti and d'Argens became BFFs and decided never to trust anything Voltaire said ever. Wise men that they were.

Then Voltaire leaves Prussia, and is now free to write as much as he wants against Maupertuis, and to make sure *everybody* reads his Doctor Akakia pamphlet. Which he does.

In sum, I don't for a moment believe I have the full story, but I haven't found a non-petty motive in any of the accounts of I've read for Voltaire to start attacking Maupertuis like that. From all accounts I have, it just reads like academic politics, which escalated because it started out a fight between two middleweights, König and Maupertuis, and ended up a bout between the two heavyweights, Voltaire and Fritz. Who *could not* resist getting involved.

Re: Voltaire vs. Maupertuis

[selenak]

shall behave in a manner which is suitable for a man of letters who has the honour of being a chamberlain to His Majesty, and who lives among honest men. [mildred's note: I literally choked reading that last phrase.]

Good grief, so did I. I mean....!!!

Also, that‘s an awesome summing up wonderfully reminiscent of some academic quarrels I‘ve witnessed from afar. Minus the anonymous pamphleteering. Incidentally, since during the 7 years war Maupertuis is dying in Basel (when Amalie finances his wife going there in Lehndorff‘s diary entry), I take it he left Prussia before that?

Voltaire memoirs I

[mildred_of_midgard]

First, a little background on the memoirs.

Shortly after he and Fritz had their falling out in 1752/1753, an anonymous pamphlet appeared trashing Fritz. Voltaire denied it was him. Then he died in 1778. In 1784, his memoirs appeared, and were immediately translated into English. I can't find a copy of the 1750s pamphlet, but I'm told a lot of passages were reused, making it really clear it was him.

Fritz rolled his eyes and never officially responded to either.

I'm not giving a systematic summary here: just the parts that I have commentary on, and the ones that made me laugh out loud or say "ouch."

---

After describing FW and Fritz, Voltaire writes,

The world perhaps never beheld a father and son who less resembled each other than these two Monarchs.

Which is interesting, because Fritz and FW are like glass half empty/glass half full: do you want to emphasize the differences or the similarities? I think the picture is incomplete with only one. Grumbkow, who obviously knew both father and son much better than Voltaire, wrote to Seckendorff: "In short, I think there are on this earth no two men quite like them, father and son." (I don't envy anyone who was caught between them, that's for sure.)

Now, remember when FW came home after the escape attempt and immediately started assaulting Wilhelmine and accusing her of having illegitimate children with Katte and so forth? This is Voltaire's account.

He proceeded to kick her out of a large window, which opened from the floor to the ceiling. The Queen-Mother, who was present at this exploit, with great difficulty saved her, by catching hold of her petticoats as she was making her leap. The Princess received a contusion on her left breast, which remained with her during life, as a mark of paternal affection, and which she did me the honour to shew me.

Voltaire throws shade at Fredersdorf (whom he does not name in this passage, but will name later):

This soldier, who was young, well made, handsome, and played upon the flute, had more ways than one of amusing the royal prisoner. So many fine qualities have made his fortune, and I have since known him, at the same time Valet de Chambre and first Minister, with all the insolence which two such posts may be supposed to inspire.

Slept his way to the top and didn't have the grace to defer to his betters when he got there, in other words.

The Katte, or as Voltaire spells it, "Kat", interlude I will deal with at great length in my textual criticism write-up, so I'll skip that here.

About Keith, he writes:

Keit [sic; phonetic spelling of the German pronunciation that wasn't all that uncommon at the time], the other confidant,had escaped and fled into Holland; Whither the King dispatched his military messengers to seize him. He escaped merely by a minute, embarked. for Portugal, and, there remained till the death of the most clement Frederic William.

It was not the King's intention to have stopped there; his design was to have beheaded the Prince. He considered that he had three others sons, not one of whom wrote verses [He's only 4 now, but you may be in for a surprise with little "l'autre moi-même," FW] and that they were sufficient to sustain the Prussian grandeur. Measures had been already concerted to make him suffer, as the Czarovitz, eldest son to Peter the Great, had done before.

It is not exceeding clear, from any known laws, human or divine, that a young man should have his head struck off, because he had a wish to travel. But his Majesty had found judges in Prussia, equally as learned and equitable as the Russian expounders of law.

As I recall, Peter, unlike FW, actually got a death sentence verdict for his son out of his court.

About Voltaire's early correspondence with Fritz:

As the King his father, suffered him to have very little to do with the national affairs, or as there rather indeed were no such affairs in a government, the whole business of which was reviews, he employed his leisure in writing to those men of letters in France, who were something known in the world...He treated me as a something divine, and I him as a Solomon. Epithets cost us nothing. They have printed some of these ridiculous things in a collection of my works, and happily they have not printed the thirtieth part of them.

There, there, Voltaire. Celebrity breakups are hard.

Now it's 1740, the trip west to Bayreuth and Strasbourg, and Fritz gives Voltaire a letter containing some poetry he wrote. Voltaire quotes this letter and the verses in it at length, and then concludes,

We may see by this letter, that he was not yet become the best of all possible poets.

BUUUURRRRNNN. Love the Leibniz and Candide throwback, Voltaire.

Then, after Fritz's failed incognito visit to Strasbourg, he and Voltaire met in person for the first time at Cleves (near the Dutch border, which belongs to Prussia during this period).

Now, part of the reason Fritz had to cancel his planned trip to Paris, besides the whole kerfluffle about fake passports and getting arrested, was that he was having a malaria flare-up. (We do have independent evidence of this, not just Voltaire.) So when Voltaire meets him, he reports that Fritz is bedridden with a fever.

I was conducted into his Majesty's apartment, in which I found nothing but four bare walls. By the light of a bougie [candle], I perceived a small truckle bed, of two feet and a half wide, in a closet, upon which lay a little man, wrapped up in a morning gown of blue cloth. It was his Majesty, who lay sweating and shaking, beneath a beggarly coverlet, in a violent ague fit. I made my bow, and began my acquaintance by feeling his pulse, as if I had been his first physician.

cahn, are you thinking what I'm thinking? Fodder for next year's Fritz/Voltaire crack fic is what I'm thinking! This is so trope-y it defies belief. (I was already aware of this account from biographies--seriously, Voltaire is so quotable almost his entire memoirs were a reread--but I don't think I had shared it before.)

And now it's time for major shade-throwing over the Anti-Machiavel. Voltaire's most famous quote is

Had Machiavel a Prince for a pupil, the very first thing he would have advised him to do, would have been so to write. The Prince Royal, however, was not master of so much finesse.

And while Voltaire is printing this book, Fritz is beginning his life of conquest. Oops!

Voltaire: "Um, you might want to rethink the timing of this?"
Fritz: "Okay, okay, stop the presses."
The bookseller: "It's too late!...Unless you pay me a lot of money, that is."
Voltaire:

The bookseller demanded so much money, that his Majesty, who was not, in the bottom of his heart, vexed to see himself in print, was better pleased to be so for nothing, than to pay for not being so.

Then comes another famous Voltaire quote, about the death of MT's dad:

Charles the Sixth died, in the month of October 1740, of an indigestion, occasioned by eating champignons [mushrooms], which brought on an apoplexy, and this plate of champignons changed the destiny of Europe.

And then,

It was presently evident, that Frederic the third, King of Prussia, was not so great an enemy of Machiavel as the Prince Royal appeared to have been.

Frederic the third, hmm? I guess FW is Frederic the second? First I've heard of that.

Then Voltaire quotes and comments on an interesting passage from Fritz's memoirs, which he sent to Voltaire for correction:

Here follows one of the curious paragraphs, in the introduction to these annals; which I, in preference, carefully transcribed, as a thing unique in its kind:

"Ambition, interest, and a desire to make the world speak of me, vanquished all, and war was determined on."

From the time that the conquerors, or fiery spirits that would be conquerors first were, to the present hour, I believe he is the only one who has ever done himself thus much justice. Never man, perhaps, felt reason more forcibly, or listened more attentively to his passions; but this mixture of a philosophic mind, and a disorderly imagination, have ever composed his character.

It is much to be regretted that I prevailed on him to omit these passages, when I afterwards corrected his works; a confession so uncommon, should havepassed down to posterity, and have served to shew upon what motives the generality of wars are founded. We authors, poets, historians, and academician declaimers, celebrate these fine exploits; but here is a monarch who performs and condemns them.

Keep in mind, Voltaire is reeeeeallly disillusioned over the Silesian invasion. And he kept a running list of all of Fritz's other abuses of power, and his satires (yes, even as Fritz didn't want Voltaire satirizing other people, Voltaire didn't like Fritz satirizing other people).

Oh, I should add that Fritz's retort to Voltaire's disillusionment was to say that if Voltaire had an army, he would use it to make war on his multitudinous enemies in the French literary world. I believe this 1000000%.

So remember when Maupertuis was summoned to join Fritz in Silesia (when he and Algarotti and Peter Keith were all twiddling their thumbs in Berlin), and he got captured? This was Mollwitz, btw, Fritz's first battle, where he was talked into leaving the field while the Prussians were losing, and then one of his generals turned it around and won, much to Fritz's delight and dismay. Here is Voltaire's account:

Maupertuis, who hoped to make his fortune in a hurry, was in the suit of the Monarch this compaign [sic], imagining that the King would at least find him a horse. But this was not the royal custom. Maupertuis bought an ass for two ducats, on the day of battle, and fled with all his might after his Majesty on ass-back. This steed, however, was presently distanced, and Maupertuis was taken and stripped by the Austrian hussars.

That's got to be a record amount of shade packed into one paragraph. On the other hand, they're giving him quite a bit of material to work with.

Then, after Fritz wins the First Silesian War, he goes home to Berlin to beautify it. Voltaire actually has some nice things to say about it. But he mostly constructs it as a compare-and-contrast between Berlin under FW and Berlin under Fritz, and so he comes up with this amazing gem:

Several people had furniture in their houses, and some even wore shirts, for in the former reign such things were little known; they were sleeves and fore-bodies only, tied on with pack thread, and the reigning Monarch had been so educated.

Then Voltaire's sent to spy on Fritz for the French. This is all top-secret, of course. But they have to tell Émilie Du Châtelet, because she's super upset. (Does not like the misogynistic King of Prussia, does not like that he keeps trying to lure Voltaire away from her. My secondary sources say Fritz veered between flattering her to try to get on Voltaire's good side, so as to lure him away, and saying she wasn't good enough for him and no she can't come to Berlin. It's really indistinguishable from a love triangle.) Furthermore, Voltaire said they had to agree to let her read all the top-secret correspondence. Go, Émilie.

When he comes to Berlin, he finds that Fritz's living arrangements are very spartan:

Marcus Aurelius and Julian, the two greatest men among the Romans, and apostles of the Stoics, lay not on a harder bed.

Then he follows it with the famous "Fritz was not only a homosexual but a PASSIVE homosexual ZOMG!!!11!!!" quote.

As soon as his Majesty was dressed and booted, Stoicism for a few moments gave place to Epicurism. Two or three of his favourites entered: these were either Lieutenants, Ensigns, Pages, Heiduques, or young Cadets. Coffee was brought in, and he to whom the handkerchief was thrown, remained ten minutes tête-à-tête with his Majesty. Things were not carried to the last extremity, because while Prince, in his father's life-time, he had been very ill treated, and ill cured, in his amours de passade. He could not play principal, and was obliged to content himself with the second.

Then we see some not-even-phonetic spelling: Fudesdoff, and Fridesdorff, "who was at once his High Steward, Great Cup-bearer, and First Pantler."

Another famous quote:

In a word, Frederic lived without religion, without a council, and without a court.

Oh, look, it's freedom of conscience and the penis! [OMG. cahn, I think I just found the title of our crackfic. :-PP]

Re: Voltaire memoirs I

[selenak]

Which is interesting, because Fritz and FW are like glass half empty/glass half full: do you want to emphasize the differences or the similarities? I think the picture is incomplete with only one.

Same here. Since Voltaire never knew FW, though, I‘m not surprised he didn‘t see it. (And that is a key difference to the Peter the Great/Alexeij constellation, or for that matter to the Hannover cousins with their own father-son dramas.)

Voltaire‘s take on the FW vs Wilhelmine scene: I think W nearly getting thrown out of the window is about as likely as FW being personally present at Küstrin to supervise Katte‘s execution, i.e. Voltaire‘s dramatic instincts get the better of him. Nonetheless, it must have been a harrowing scene and undoubtedly FW did hit her. (As mentioned in another comment, that‘s my guess as to what Heinrich means when mentioning the „ one particular bad memory“ from when he was four that reading Wilhelmine‘s memoirs brought up in him again, since in both her account and that Fritz gives to Catt it‘s mentioned the younger siblings were present, and even if little Heinrich probably saw oldest sister not every often and didn‘t have an actual relationship with her, it must have been frightening as hell to see FW scream and punch at her.

BUUUURRRRNNN. Love the Leibniz and Candide throwback, Voltaire.

Me too, and I‘m glad the English translator caught it and rendered it accordingly.

Re: „Frederic the Third“ - how he comes up with that one is beyond me. It‘s not even right if you count the Hohenzollern as Margraves instead of Kings - Grandpa F1 was F3 by Margrave counting, for example.

Incidentally, fast forward to the late 19th century, Bismarck founds a German Empire, of which the King of Prussia becomes the first emperor, and since he‘s a Wilhelm, that‘s no numeration problem - none of the Emperors of the Holy Roman Empire (which Napoleon had officially dissolved) had been called Wilhelm before, so he‘s officially Wilhelm I. But decades later, his son, the unfortunate liberal hope of Germany, Friedrich, who doesn‘t even rule for a year because he has (probably) throat cancer, finally makes it to the throne. Now, does he get counted as Friedrich IV, putting himself in the HRE tradition, because there had been three Friedrichs there? Or as Friedrich III, as by the count of Prussian kings, despite the fact F1 and F2 never were emperors? Doomed Friedrich the son-in-law of Queen Victoria wanted the former, but Prussia First ministers insisted on the later. So he became F3 and died before the year was over.

Fritz vs Emilie: definitely comes across as him seeing her as competition!

The snobbery re: Fredersdorff is typical. And probably due to the fact Fredersdorff did just forward his letters instead of rewarding Voltaire‘s grovelling by making good weather for him with Fritz.

Voltaire memoirs II

[mildred_of_midgard]

Hilarious anecdote depicting Fritz as A+++ troll:

A Minister near Stettin, thought this indulgence exceedingly scandalous, and let fall some expressions in a sermon upon Herod, which glanced at the King; he was therefore summoned to appear before the Consistory at Potzdam, though in fact there was no more a Consistory at Court than there was a Mass. The poor man came. The King put on a band and surplice. M.d'Argens, Author of the Jewish Letters, and one Baron de Polnitz [cahn, the Hohenzollern's go-to guy for anecdotes], who had changed his religion three or four times, dressed themselves up in the same manner. A folio volume of Bayle's Dictionary [controversial and influential work of the Enlightenment that critiqued religion] was placed upon the table by way of a Bible, and the culprit was introduced by two grenadiers, and set before these three Ministers of the Gospel.

My brother, said the King, I demand, in the name of the most High God, who the Herod was concerning whom you preached? He who slew the Children, replied the simple Priest. But was this Herod the first ? said the King; for you ought to know there have been several Herods. The Priest was silent ; he could not answer this question. How! continued the King have you dared to preach about Herod, and are ignorant both of him and his family? You are unworthy of the holy ministry. We shall pardon you for this time, but know we shall excommunicate you if ever you dare hereafter preach against any one whom you do not know,

They then delivered his sentence and pardon to him, signed by three ridiculous names invented on purpose. We shall go to-morrow to Berlin, added the King, and we will demand forgiveness for you of our brotherhood. Do not fail to come and find us out. Accordingly the Priest went, and enquired for these three labourers in the gospel vineyard all over Berlin, where he was laughed at, but the King, who had more humour than liberality, forgot to reimburse him for the expences of his journey.

Voltaire says Fritz never paid back any of the money he borrowed as Crown Prince either:

Like as Louis XII would not revenge the affronts of the Duke d'Orleans, neither would the King of Prussia remember the debts of the Prince Royal.

We knew that.

Voltaire doesn't like Doris Ritter:

A tall, meagre figure, very like one of the Sibyls, without the least appearance of meriting to be publicly whipped for a Prince.

Now he tells an anecdote about one of FW's giants, who attempted desertion, then when caught, said the only thing he regretted was not stabbing such a tyrant as FW. So he had his nose and ears cut off and was sent to Spandau.

Voltaire decides to take advantage of a moment when Fritz expresses gratitude for his poetical efforts, and ask for this guy to be released. He put his request into poetry.

The request was something daring, but one may say what one will poetically. His Majesty promised remission and some months after even had the bounty to send the poor gentleman in question to the Hospital, at three pence a day, which favour he had refused to the Queen his mother, but she, in all probability, had asked only in prose.

A few years later, Fritz manages to lure Voltaire back to his court, this time as a permanent resident. (Poor Émilie has just died prematurely in childbirth.)

Voltaire writes:

Who might resist a Monarch, a Hero, a Poet, a Musician, a Philosopher, who pretended too to love me, and whom I thought I also loved...My Frederic-Alcina*, who saw my brain was already a little discorded, redoubled the potions that I might be totally inebriated...A Mistress could not have written more tenderly.

* You two with your love of opera probably know this, but I had to look it up: Alcina is a sorceress in a 1728 Handel opera of the same name, taken originally from Orlando furioso (which you can tell I haven't read).

Then Fritz writes Voltaire a letter, trying to convince him to stay.

...a letter such as few of their Majesties write: it was the finishing glass to compleat my drunkenness. His wordy protestations were still stronger than his written ones. He was accustomed to very singular demonstrations of tenderness to younger favourites than I, and forgetting for a moment I was not of their age, and had not a fine hand, he seized it and imprinted a kiss; I took his, returned his salute, and signed myself his slave.

Then it's more squabbling with the members of the Academy, surprisingly boring and rarely witty. (See my Voltaire vs. Maupertuis write-up.) Then he leaves.

Leaving my palace of Alcina, I went to pass a month with the Dutchess of Saxe-Gotha, the best of Princesses, full of gentleness, discretion, and equanimity, and who, God be thanked, did not make verses.

Then the Frankfurt episode happens. To refresh your memory, he has a book of poetry written by Fritz which satirizes everyone in Europe, a book that's only meant to be read by a select circle, and Fritz is very afraid that Voltaire might let that book fall into the wrong hands. (Like, pretty much any hands would be the wrong hands for this book.)

So Fritz has Freitag, the Prussian Resident in Frankfurt, get the book out of Voltaire. But Voltaire says he doesn't have the book, he'll have to send for it from Leipzig. Fine, says the Freitag, but you're under house arrest until you do.

Then Voltaire reproduces the letter that Freitag gave him, which the English translator represents thus:

Montseer, so soon as shawl dey great pack come ouf Leipsic, mit de werks ouf poesy be given mit me, you shawl go ous were you do please. Given at Franckfurt de vurst of June, 1753. -Freitag, Resident ouf de King mine master."

At the bottom of which I signed, "Good, vor dey vurks ouf poesy de King your master." -With which the Resident was well satisfied.

As Voltaire reports it, he hands over the book and other requested items as soon as he gets them, then attempts to leave. But Freitag won't let him leave, and roughs up not only Voltaire, but also his niece and lover Madame Denis, who

had a passport from the King of France, and moreover, never had corrected the King of Prussia's verses.

And then they were imprisoned for 12 days, and had to pay to get out, and many of their belongings were taken.

One need not wish to pay dearer for the poesy [italicized] of the King of Prussia. I lost about as much as it had cost him to send for me and take lessons, and we were quits at parting.

Frankfurt was not in Prussia! Frankfurt was a free city of the HRE! This was kind of a scandal! (Of course, given the two parties involved, rather than get worked up about it, most of Europe decided they thoroughly deserved each other and broke out the popcorn for munching as events unfolded, because this was better than a play.)

Now, Fritz's version of events, as recounted to Catt, goes thus:

"I know that Voltaire complained loudly and breathed fire against me in all the little courts which he passed through ; but I assure you that this blockhead of a Freytag exceeded my orders. I asked him simply to get back for me my book of poems, and the bumpkin demanded it with a harshness of which I disapproved. I know the regard which is due to distinguished men of letters ; how should I have been wanting in this regard with one who surpasses them all! Voltaire lied in his throat when he said that I was responsible for the bad treatment he suffered at Frankfort. He has been tremendously sulky towards me for it, and, in spite of all his cajoleries, I do not trust him very greatly yet."

This alternation of trust and mistrust which often made its appearance when Voltaire and several other people were concerned always struck me particularly. Left to the calm of reason, the King was distrustful of the tricks of which M. de Voltaire was capable, but allowing himself to be carried away by an imagination excited and flattered by the dazzling images and the delicate praise presented to him, he gave himself up without reserve to the Patriarch of Literature.

Several years later, during the Seven Years' War, there's another episode that we see both through Voltaire's eyes and Catt's.

Fritz writes a satire on the French, recounting how he totally kicked their butts at Rossbach (it was such a humiliating defeat and so one-sided that Voltaire snarks that Prince Heinrich was the only Prussian wounded that day), and shows it to Catt.

Catt: You're my boss, so I can't speak my mind too frankly here, but...don't you think it's a little harsh and the French might take it badly?
Fritz: What? No! How is it too harsh? It's perfect. I'm going to send it to Voltaire. It's a satire, he's gonna love it.
Catt *thinking*: Oh, thank god, something I can work with.
Catt: The same Voltaire you're always calling a monkey and saying is the most malicious trickster figure to ever walk the pages of legend? Don't you think he might...do something malicious?
Fritz: Hmm. You could be right. Okay, I won't send it.
Catt: A wise choice, Your Majesty.
Fritz *sotto voce*: While you're in the room.
Catt: *leaves the room*
Fritz: *sends poem*

Meanwhile, Voltaire, now living IN FRANCE, receives a copy of this poem.

Voltaire: Oh, fuck. This package has clearly been opened a number of times in transit and spied on before it reached me. Everyone knows I used to correct Fritz's verse; they're going to think I had something to do with this. In France, where I live. FUCK YOU, FRITZ.

The remainder of the memoirs are largely politics and people who are not Fritz (and Fritz's emotional state during the early years of the Seven Years' War, when he was alternating between euphoria and depression in sync with victories, defeats, and family deaths), and the only quotable passage I spotted was:

For this purpose [Maria Theresa] negociated with the Empress of Russia and the King of Poland, that is, in quality of Elector of Saxony, for nobody negociates with the Poles.

Poor Poles.

And with that, I conclude the Voltaire memoirs. 

Re the Frankfurt affair, Carlyle reports that an earlier 19th century historian, Varnhagen von Ense, looked into the Frankfurt affair and found a million holes in Voltaire's version of events. Among other things, the dialect reproduced by Voltaire is not in found in actual letters by Freytag, which read like unremarkable French and German. What Ense finds is that:

1) Fritz was genuinely not involved; he just told Fredersdorf to get the book back.

2) Fredersdorf wrote a very unclear order asking Freytag for "Skripturen", which could have been anything, instead of Oeuvre de Poesies. This failure to clarify which writings led to a lot of confusion. "Eichel would have been much clearer!" Carlyle laments.

3) Freytag did exceed orders.

4) Voltaire was crazy. (Lol, we know.)

19th century historians trying to exonerate Fritz the Infallible? Idk. But that's the story as I have it.

Re: Voltaire memoirs II

[selenak]

The Alcina comparison is a marvel. Especially considering that Alcina as far as I recall is supposed to be the ultimate seductress, no man can resist her, etc.

(ETA: Also a variation of Circe, as her enchantments eventually get lifted. I wonder why Voltaire didn't go directly for the Circe/Odysseus comparison? (/ETA)

Voltaire complaining about Doris Ritter‘s looks will never cease to amaze me in its, well, Voltaire-ness. I mean, it‘s besides the point in any case - the point being that she‘s a victim of royal injustice however she looks - but complaining that a woman who has gone through three years in the workhouse and public whippings and then somehow has managed to build a life for herself afterwards, with a husband and children, does not look like a romantic heroine is, well, to misquote Shaffer‘s Mozart: What can one say but - Voltaire!

Mutual handkissing is probably as physical as these two ever got, and somehow sums it up.

Passionate Minds: Émilie and Voltaire

[mildred_of_midgard]

Young Émilie likes reading books and talking about intellectual matters. Dad encourages her; Mom resents and discourages her. Mom wants to lock her in a convent. Dad manages to keep her out.

They send her to court to try to find a husband. She doesn't like the guys who keep hitting on her, so she finds a soldier and challenges him to a public duel. They fight with swords, not to kill. It's a draw. Now the men leave her alone. (#RoleModel)

She doesn't have a lot of money and not a lot of socially acceptable means of making money. But then she discovers gambling, and more specifically, card counting! (Émilie, ILUUUU!) 

Then she immediately spends half her money on books. (Émilie, ILU EVEN MORE!)

She ends up married to a decent man who likes having an intelligent wife and is willing to let her do her own thing as long as he can have his own affairs on the side and they don't have to interact much.

Cut to Voltaire. A young François Arouet has gotten locked in the Bastille for mouthing off. Drama happens. He adopts the pen name Voltaire. 

His dad has hated him all his life. (I wonder if he and Fritz ever commiserated over bad dads.) Like Wilhelmine, Voltaire works out his issues via art therapy, since he doesn't have the option of forcing his alter egos to marry.

"In all of world literature, the play that had most attracted young Arouet was Sophocles' Oedipus, with its hard-to-resist motif of a son murdering his father. For Arouet's own father had constantly disparaged him, calling him lazy and 'cursed by God.' When as a teenager Arouet had refused to go through the charade of law school that his father had tried forcing him into, he'd been threatened with exile to a miserable, malaria-ridden life on the plantations in the French West Indies. It didn't help that Arouet was probably illegitimate, and that his father had furiously taxed him with this fault as well." 

(I can see wanting to cheat on this guy, Mme. Arouet.)

His Oedipus is a big hit. He even gets Dad to attend. Dad, who apparently has as much ability to read between the lines as Lehndorff, is seen madly applauding.

The nobleman who got him locked in the Bastille gives him a gold watch and an annual subsidy. Quote from the book: "Though when Orléans personally told him of the annuity, Voltaire replied that although he thanked the regent for helping to pay for his food, in the future he would prefer to take care of his lodgings himself."

Voltaire has fun in Paris for a while, exchanges repartee with a nobleman, gets imprisoned in the Bastille again, then kicked out of France, because since when is freedom of speech a thing in 18th century France? He goes to England, learns to speak English partly by sitting in the theater at Drury Lane listening to Shakespeare while reading a copy of the play and mouthing the words to himself.

He discovers that England is awesome! Because it's liberal! Wow, it's so much better than France. Watch them not have a bloody revolution half a century from now. (Tangential quote I couldn't resist passing on: "He discovered strange, meat-avoiding beings called “vegetarians,” who compounded their oddity by going for long brisk walks for their health.")

He learns a lot, and his stay shapes his political thinking. But then he gets homesick. After a couple years, things calm down enough that he's able to go back to Paris.

Meanwhile, Émilie is discovering that the reason other women are so vapid and gossipy is because society doesn't allow them the education to become anything else. (Something Fritz seems to have also figured out, not that it changed his misogyny one bit.)

She has a couple kids with her husband, and an affair with a nobleman. It's fun, but she wants more emotional depth. They stay friendly exes.

Voltaire discovers he can get rich by outsmarting the government, buying up large numbers of bonds at a deeply discounted price from wealthy people, then getting the government to redeem these bonds at full price. Success! Now he's rich and doesn't need a patron. Life is good. But lonely.

Then Émilie and Voltaire are introduced by mutual friends. Love at first sight. Sex and poetry and science and philosophy. But then they break up (it seems to have been a tumultuous relationship). She has an affair with Maupertuis.

Then she gets back together with Voltaire, because she can't give him up any more than Fritz will be able to in future years.

A warrant for Voltaire's arrest (lettre de cachet) is out. Émilie helps him escape to the border, where one of her exes is stationed, as the French make war on the Austrians in the War of the Polish Succession. Voltaire gets to hang out in camp, wanders a little too far afield, gets taken for a spy. He narrowly escapes getting executed on the spot.

Hilariously, I checked the dates when I saw Eugene of Savoy's name, and sure enough, it's Philippsburg in summer 1734, which means while Voltaire is wandering around the French camp as a noncombatant, Crown Prince Fritz is a combatant over on the Austrian side. They must have figured this out in later years.

Anyway, Émilie is annoyed with Voltaire for almost getting himself killed.Voltaire doesn't care, he busy with his latest project: using his giant fortune to rebuild a falling-down chateau that belongs to Émilie's husband's family. This is Cirey, where Voltaire and Émilie will later spend most of their time, do famous research, and people from all over Europe (including Algarotti, Sir Not-Appearing-In-This-Book) will come to visit them.

Émilie is in Paris, trying to hook up with Maupertuis again, but while he's down for sex, he won't treat her as an intellectual equal, and she can't stand that. So she goes back to Voltaire.

Once Émilie shows up at Cirey, she's on board with the renovation project, but has completely different architectural ideas, and takes over the design. Go Émilie.

Then they move in. Science happens! They do a commentary on the Bible, they study Newton, they get a telescope and study the night skies.

Then there's another arrest order out for Voltaire. (You'll see a lot of recurring themes in this story, much as there are recurring themes in the Fritz/Voltaire story.)

Voltaire flees incognito to the Low Countries. He's worse than Fritz at incognito! He "manage[s] to hold out for almost a whole day" under a false identity, before letting everyone know who he really is. By the time he gets to Brussels, they're staging one of his plays in his honor.

Émilie is annoyed.

But then Voltaire comes back, and she missed him, so she forgives him. More science happens! Voltaire takes up corresponding with some crown prince in Prussia. "He's the literal best!" he tells Émilie. "Hope of the nations! Messiah! Our Lord and Savior!"

Émilie: *is not convinced*

"He wants me to come visit him at Rheinsberg. Can I can I can I?"

"HIS DAD IS STILL KING YOU IDIOT."

Oh. Right. "Okay, but later! After he becomes the Best King Ever (TM)."

"I'll cross that bridge when I come to it."

As I recounted in another comment, when Fritz sends Keyserlingk on a supposedly social visit, Émilie locks away the most incriminating play, and Keyserlingk leaves disappointed.

Émilie is my hero.

Meanwhile, the Academy of Sciences is offering a prize for the best submission. Voltaire decides to enter. Émilie will help.

But partway through the project, she's all, "Oh, I'm such a weak woman, all this experimental science is too physically taxing, where are my smelling salts?" So a very Voltaire lets her retire to her room early every night. Where she sits at her desk late into the night, coming up with a much better submission, because she can already tell Voltaire is not a scientist.

Émilie, can I commission, like, a monumental marble statue for you or something? I might nominate you for YT next year. Maybe in addition to Frederician 18th century, we can have a fandom for 18th century Enlightenment thinkers, get Émilie and Voltaire and Algarotti in there.

Anyway, Émilie can't do experimental science, because Voltaire will know something is up if she sets up a giant lab. So she does theoretical science. And by thinking about optics, she manages to come up with a better submission than Voltaire with all his experimental equipment. He makes a number of amateur mistakes, seeing as how he is, you know, an amateur.

But she's a woman, so they both place the same in the competition. Neither gets first prize, because the French Academy is all Cartesian and Voltaire and Émilie are Newtonians (this is also a problem Algarotti, who you may remember was the first person in Italy to reproduce Newton's optical experiments, had in France, which is partly why he didn't want to settle down there).

After the burn of getting outshone by Émilie working alone at night with no equipment, Voltaire decides to take a break from physics and go back to writing, which he's much better at.

Then FW dies! Émilie can't keep Voltaire fully away from Fritz, but she does her best. We know the Fritz/Voltaire story much better than this ridiculous author does, so I'll skip over that part.

Voltaire and Émilie have another breakup. Émilie has a bit of a breakdown, starts losing money when she gambles, binge eats, stops doing science. :-(

Voltaire realizes he needs an actual ally at court, so gets one of his acquaintances, Jeanne Poisson, into the King's bed. The idea is that being so lowborn, she won't have a noble family to protect her, so she'll be totally dependent on Voltaire and the other guy who helped put her there.

It...doesn't work out like that. Madame de Pompadour can take care of herself, thank you very much.

Oh, I discovered a while back that Louis XV was in fact present in person at Fontenoy. I didn't have details, but I figured it wasn't anything to write home about. Turns out his first battle is like Fritz's, but more so, because he doesn't really do anything in the first place. Nor does he treat it as part of the learning curve. (Not that I'm all in favor of Fritz's wars, but I respect his personal courage, skill, and determination, even if his reasons for going to war are not cool.)

Émilie is pulling herself together and going back to science and philosophy. Voltaire is having an affair with his niece. Things are not going as well at court as he'd hoped when he helped bring young Jeanne to the King's attention.

They decide to try again. But when Émilie is gambling at court, the tables are rigged, and she loses a fortune. Voltaire opens his big mouth, accuses the nobles of cheating, and they have to flee. Émilie goes to Paris, where she figures out how to make a large amount of money by making the taxation system work in her favor. She manages to get all her debts either paid off or forgiven, in, like, a month.

Meanwhile, Voltaire is hiding from arrest (yes, again) at a friend's country house. He gets one dark room, curtains always closed so one can tell he's living there, and no visitors, just one servant. It's hell.

Until he starts writing. Then he gets so absorbed in what he's doing that he doesn't want to leave. But Émilie shows up, they have fun again, life is good, for a while. But things are still tense, and they're trying to make it work. They decide traveling will be good for the relationship.

They go hang out at the court of Stanislaus, deposed king of Poland (remember the War of the Polish Succession that Voltaire and Fritz were briefly involved in) and father of Marie Leszczyńska, queen of France. 

The gossipy sensationalism begins!

It turns out Stanislaus has a mistress named Catherine. His priest does not approve of this. Especially since said priest is a Jesuit, and Catherine hates Jesuits. Father Joseph decides that, while no mistress would be ideal, Stanislaus has made it's clear not happening, so any mistress would be better than this mistress.

"Émilie is famous! And pretty enough. If I invite her to court, Stanislaus is sure to ditch Catherine for her!" goes Father Joseph's rather bizarre logic.

Émilie: Lol wut. He's 71. I'm with Voltaire. Catherine, though, you seem cool.
Émilie and Catherine: *become BFFs*
Stanislaus: *is relieved not to have to satisfy two mistresses at his age* (<-- Seriously, this is what the author says.)

However, Voltaire and Émilie are on the outs again. She starts having an affair with a rather younger and better looking man at Stanislaus' court, who used to be Catherine's lover. Stanislaus approves. Things are good for a while. She finds a love letter from her new lover to Catherine. Voltaire catches Émilie and her new lover having sex. Émilie knows he has a lover in Paris (but doesn't guess it's his niece). Drama and explosions ensue.

Things start falling apart between her and her new lover. She goes back to Voltaire, but now she's pregnant, and it's not his. He's not super happy. She's convinced she's going to die in childbirth. She does, age 42. </3

"How convenient, I mean sad," says Fritz, who is an asshole where Émilie is concerned. (Fritz, I'm warning you, Heinrich's on his own, like the rest of your family, but I have finally found the one person on whose behalf I will fight you.) Within months, Voltaire is at his court, either having run out of excuses to stay away, if you believe a Fritz biographer, or if you believe this biographer, without Émilie to protect him from himself.

RIP, Émilie.

Re: Passionate Minds: Émilie and Voltaire

[selenak]

Émilie does sound fantastic, and I fully support an "Age of the Englightenment" category for next Yuletide. (Other possible candidates: La Contamide, aka the guy with whom Wilhelmine is exploring volcanoes and archaelogical diggings in Italy, Caroline Herrschel - like her brother an astronomer - and Dr. Johnson & James Boswell?)

Card counting - I know autistic geniuses in movies do this, but I've often wondered whether it would really work in rl - though if Émilie could do it apparantly so? Ada, Countess Lovelace, she who developes the first programming in the 18th century, daughter of Byron tried - and failed miserably.

In all of world literature, the play that had most attracted young Arouet was Sophocles' Oedipus, with its hard-to-resist motif of a son murdering his father.

On the one hand, I can see your point, biographer - and btw this also explains why Voltaire would think Semiramis, featuring a wife-kills-husband backstory and a son-kills-mother present day story, would be a great subject to celebrate the birth of Louis XVI with - , but on the other, my inner nitpicker would like to point out that Sophocles' Oedipus is probably the last oedipal hero in all of Greek tragedy and legend. I mean, the guy goes out of his way not to kill his father and marry his mother. When an oracle tells him he will do this, he runs away, never to see the people he believes to be his parents again. (They never told him he was adopted.) He has zero idea the man he killed in an argument was his bio dad. And it happens in the play's backstory anyway. Where's the emotional satisfaction and catharsis in that?

So, if Maupertuis was only up for sex but not for an intellectual relationship, what was the attraction? Annoying Voltaire? He was that good in the sack?

What became of Émilie's submission once the competition was over, i.e. was it ever adapted and taught later?

Émilie's Fritz scepticism: realistic estimation of royals, or of Voltaire?